First Steps - Mastering phpMyAdmin 2.11 for Effective MySQL Management - page 65

To improve the speed of queries we will make by author ID, we should add an index
on this field. Our screen now looks like this:
At this point, we could change the table type using the Type drop-down menu, but
for now we will just accept the default type.
Now we are ready to create the table by clicking on Save . If all goes well, the next
screen confirms that the table has been created; we are now in the Structure sub-page
of Table view.
If we forget to specify a value in the Length column for a CHAR or VARCHAR ,
phpMyAdmin would remind us before trying to create the table.
Of the various tabs leading to other sub-pages, some are not active, because it
would not make sense to browse or search a table if there are no rows in it. It would,
however, be acceptable to export, because we can export a table's structure even if it
contains no data.