How do I manage a MySQL database in PHPMyAdmin in my control panel (cpanel)?

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In this article, we'll give a brief introduction to phpMyAdmin, a web based mySQL client you can use to manage your databases. There are many tools and features that phpMyAdmin includes, but in this article we're only going to cover a few basics.

Before you can manage a database within phpMyAdmin, you must first create the database. For more help with creating a database, please see:
How do I create a MySQL database in my control panel?

After you have created the database, you can now access the database within phpMyAdmin.

How to log into phpMyAdmin

To log into phpMyadmin:

1. Log into your cPanel
2. Click the phpMyAdmin icon under the "Databases" heading.
3. Congratulations, you are now logged into phpMyAdmin!

Please note that sometimes you will want to give a web developer phpMyAdmin access. Instead of giving them your cPanel access data (which is not secure), you can install a separate installation of phpMyAdmin for them so they can access it without having access to cPanel itself. For more help with this, please see:
Installing PHPMyAdmin on your Account

What am I looking at when I log into phpMyAdmin?

When you first log into phpMyAdmin, you'll see quite a bit of data. For most basic tasks, you'll select a database in the left menu (see screenshot below) and then begin to manage that individual database.

Besides a list of databases in the left menu, there are server details and configuration settings in the middle and right side of the page, but we will not cover those in this article.

Selecting a Database

If you click on a database in the left column, it will then load more information specific to that database:

In the left menu, it now shows a listing of all of the tables in the database. If you click any of the tables, it will allow you to view and manage the data in each of those tables.

In the top menu, you'll see various options for the database you're working with, such as:

• Structure
• SQL
• Search
• Query
• Export
• Import
• Operations