Im not understanding MySql stuff can someone help me when u got to the MySql site and all that other stuff is this like a log of your web stuff or does it help u desigen your website just wanted to know what it does and how do u use this thing.

Consider this forum itself. In basic terms it could be understood as people writing topics and replying to them as posts. These topics and posts can be viewed by anyone connected to the web. For this, all these information need to be stored somewhere. If you are aware of HTML you could say that the posts are stored in HTML files which are then sent back to browsers so people can see them. An HTML page, however consists of markup tags along with text. All these buttons, labels, tables, etc will have to be duplicated in each of the pages created and for something as big as the Astahost, it would waste tons of Bytes.

So, what do you do? We could avoid repetition by storing the unique contents only, in our case, the content of the post, time of posting, name of the poster, etc. While files can be used for this storage, a database comprising of tables is a much better solution. This allows data to be stored in a unit which is much more logical, thus easy to add, retrieve, modify or delete. If you are aware of a Data Base Management System such as M$ SQL or Oracle, you are ready to go with MySQL. You would also need to have some knowledge of a server side scripting language that supports MySQL. At Astahost we use PHP (I am not aware of any other language either).

You can find an excellent tutorial for MySQL at http://www.tizag.com/mysqlTutorial/

The thing that turbopowder... said is true.
MySQL is a "tool" or whatever you want to call it, that stores data.
MySQL stores the password for every user. The username for every user. MySQL is the tool that stores all the information about the users.
But of course.. you can use it for other stuff. Like storing forum posts and topics. In some cases, you can store pictures in it, but thats not anything I would recomend.
But as I said.. MySQL is a tool where you can store data in different tables.

Mysql is very very very hard to under stand lol i only got just got the hang on it not to long ago Lol i remember sitting there for days trying to find out how to do it and looking on google to find tuts etc but the way i sorta worked it out was sit there and just muck around on it you will work it out Lol i mean i can use Mysql but i wouldnt have a clue what it means i dont know that much about it

Shane,

MySQL is a SQL, in reality. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. My is My, that's obvious. So in essence you get My Structured Query Language. I know this is a bit obvious.

SQL is a powerful set tools that lets users (primarily, at a very basic level) create and manage RDBs (Relational Databases). What is a RDB? It's really a set of tables (columns and rows) that contain data. This data can range from user names, passwords, signatures, addresses (like it is used in conjunction with PHP to run these forums) to bank account numbers, asset information, records etc. The data stored in a table is dictated in the creation of the table (in a language like MySQL, PostgreSQL (linux/OpenSource), or T-/SQL (Microsoft), in this way SQL scripting resembles general programming in that data types are declared. There is also the possibility to create stored procs and functions in SQL to help manage and maintain data that has been entered. SQL also provides means of retrieving data (queries) that request information be sent from the database as specified in the query's code.

In reality, it is very unlikely that you will need SQL beyond the capabilities automated by AstaHost that run forums etc, unless you plan to manage your finance or research data in a database.

I have found that the wikipedia entries on RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems), SQL (and its derivatives) as well as a lot of related information are well written and contain more links than I am going to recreate here to other helpful sites.

Hopefully this didn't get too technical for you, if you have any other questions regarding SQL or how to get started learning about it post back here and I'd be happy to help further.

Thanks,
Doc.