Installing phpMyAdmin

Last updated: January 12, 2023
Audience: All UW

About phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin provides an easy-to-use Web interface for most of the features of MySQL’s command-line client. With phpMyAdmin you can:

  • Create and delete databases
  • Create, copy, delete and alter tables
  • Execute any SQL-statement, including batch-queries
  • Export and import databases
  • use many other advanced features

Tip: Use a shell with tab-completion, such as bash or zsh, to help you enter the commands described in this document.

Instructions

  1. Log into your web development server using a terminal emulator. If you’re not sure how to do this, click here for instructions.
  2. Change directories by typing the following at the command prompt: cd public_html
  3. Download the latest version of phpMyAdmin with wget by typing this command at the terminal: 
    wget https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/phpMyAdmin-latest-all-languages.tar.gz
  4. Unzip the file you just downloaded by typing this command at the terminal: 
    tar zxvf phpMyAdmin-latest-all-languages.tar.gz
  5. Create a shortcut to phpMyAdmin by typing this command at the terminal: 
    ln -s phpMyAdmin-latest phpmyadmin

    (replace phpMyAdmin-latest with the name of the package unpacked in step 4, should be something like

    phpMyAdmin-4.8.0.1-all-languages)

  6. Open the file that controls access to your phpMyAdmin install by typing the following commands into the terminal: 
    cd phpmyadmin
nano .htaccess
  7. Follow steps 4 or 5 (depending on your server) from the following, Authorizing a Short list of UW Netids, to password-protect the phpMyAdmin directory with your account’s UW NetID, replacing the samples with the UW NetID of your account.
  8. Save and close the file using Pico. (Click for instructions on how to use pico)
  9. Start a Web browser and enter the URL that the table shows for your website affiliation.
    Affiliation URL
    Student students.washington.edu/Your NetID/phpmyadmin/setup
    Faculty faculty.washington.edu/Your NetID/phpmyadmin/setup
    Staff staff.washington.edu/Your NetID/phpmyadmin/setup
    Department Shared NetID depts.washington.edu/Your NetID/phpmyadmin/setup
    Course Shared NetID courses.washington.edu/Your NetID/phpmyadmin/setup
    • There may be errors, ignore them for now.
  10. Click on the “New Server” button in the “Servers” section and fill in the following fields:
    Field Data
    Verbose name: Leave Blank
    Server hostname:
    Affiliation Hostname
    Student vergil.u.washington.edu
    Faculty, Staff, Department or Course your_netid.ovid.u.washington.edu
    Server port: Your MySQL port
    Use SSL Checked
  11. Click on the “Authentication” tab and fill in the following fields.
    Field Data
    Authentication type (you will need to change this!): config
    User for config auth: root
    Password for config auth: password for your MySQL server
  12. Click the button at the bottom of the screen that says “Apply” in green.
    • You may get a “warning” regarding a connection error to the MySQL server. This is a known bug: click on “ignore errors” to continue.
  13. Click the “Download” button at the bottom of the “Configuration File” section.  This will copy the config file to your local machine.
  14. Copy the configuration file into the main phpmyadmin directory and name it ‘config.inc.php’.  This directory is usually ‘phpmyadmin’ from step 6 above.
  15. You are now ready to connect to MySQL and administer it with phpMyAdmin.Start a Web browser and enter the following URL, replacing depts.washington.edu/accountname with the base URL to your website:
    https://depts.washington.edu/accountname/phpmyadmin/

Resources

Official phpMyAdmin documentation