---
title: "Setting up a Database to Handle Form Data"
description: "In this tutorial, we are going to create a website at PHPandMySQL.inmotiontesting.com. This website is going to have 2 pages, and each page is going to allow for comments. When users submit a..."
url: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/database-setup/
date: 2012-01-25
modified: 2021-08-16
author: "Brad Markle"
categories: ["Website", "Working with Databases"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Setting up a Database to Handle Form Data

In this tutorial, we are going to create a website at PHPandMySQL.inmotiontesting.com. This website is going to have 2 pages, and each page is going to allow for comments.

When users submit a comment, we’ll want to keep track of the following information:

- Their name
- Their email address
- Their website
- Their actual comment
- The time the comment was submitted

In order to keep track of this data, we need to:

1. Create a **database** for our website
2. Create a table in the database that has values for name, email, website, and comment.

## Step 1. Creating a Database

The easiest way to create a database is to use the MySQL Database Wizard available in cPanel. This will not only create a database for you, but help you create a database user and assign the user privileges to your database. For more help with creating a database, please see [How do I create a MySQL Database in my cPanel?](/support/)

If you’re following along with our example, we’ve used the MySQL Database Wizard and:

1. Created a database named inmoti6_mysite
2. Created a database user inmoti6_myuser with a password of mypassword
3. Assigned inmoti6_myuser with privileges to inmoti6_mysite

[![create-a-database-using-wizard](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_create-a-database-using-wizard.gif)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_create-a-database-using-wizard.gif)

## Step 2. Creating a Table

Now that we’ve created our database, we need to create a table to hold all user comments. This table will be called “comments”. To create this table:

1. [Log into cPanel](/support/edu/cpanel/how-to-log-into-cpanel/) and click the phpMyAdmin icon
2. Select your database in the left menu. (we clicked on “_mysite” because our database is “inmoti6_mysite”)
3. On the right side of the page under “Create new table on database”, enter “comments” as the name and 7 as the number of fields and click “Go” [![create-a-new-table-for-user-comments](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_create-a-new-table-for-user-comments.gif)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_create-a-new-table-for-user-comments.gif)
4. On the next screen, we will need to fill in specific details for our table. Please use the screenshot and details below to create the table **Field:** id **Type**: INT **A_I:** (put a check in the box) To help manage individual comments, for example to delete one, we want to assign a specific id number to each comment. **Field:** name **Type:** VARCHAR **Length/Values:** 60 **Field:** email **Type:** VARCHAR **Length/Values:** 60 **Field:** website **Type:** VARCHAR **Length/Values:** 60 **Field:** comment **Type:** TEXT **Field:** timestamp **Type:** TIMESTAMP **Default:** CURRENT_TIMESTAMP **Field:** articleid **Type:** INT Each comment needs to belong to a specific article, otherwise we wouldn’t know which comments to display for which pages. [![setting-specific-details-for-the-table](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_setting-specific-details-for-the-table.gif)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_setting-specific-details-for-the-table.gif)
5. After you have filled in the details above, click “Save” [![our-comments-table-has-been-successfully-created](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_our-comments-table-has-been-successfully-created.gif)](/support/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/website_phpmysql_our-comments-table-has-been-successfully-created.gif)

Congratulations, as this point we have successfully created our database and setup our table! In our next article, we’ll show you [how to create a **form** using HTML](/support/website/create-html-form/) that asks the user for their comment.