You can create MySQL users and databases quickly and easily by running mysql from the shell. The syntax is shown below and the dollar sign is the command prompt:
$ mysql -u adminusername -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5340 to server version: 3.23.54
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE databasename;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON databasename.* TO "wordpressusername"@"hostname"
-> IDENTIFIED BY "password";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> EXIT
Bye
$ The example shows:
- that root is also the adminusername. It is a safer practice to choose a so-called “mortal” account as your mysql admin, so that you are not entering the command “mysql” as the root user on your system. (Any time you can avoid doing work as root you decrease your chance of being exploited.) The name you use depends on the name you assigned as the database administrator using mysqladmin.
- wordpress or blog are good values for databasename.
- wordpress is a good value for wordpressusername but you should realize that, since it is used here, the entire world will know it, too.
- hostname will usually be localhost. If you don’t know what this value should be, check with your system administrator if you are not the admin for your WordPress host. If you are the system admin, consider using a non-root account to administer your database.
- password should be a difficult-to-guess password, ideally containing a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. One good way of avoiding the use of a word found in a dictionary is to use the first letter of each word in a phrase that you find easy to remember.
If you need to write these values somewhere, avoid writing them in the system that contains the things protected by them. You need to remember the value used for databasename, wordpressusername, hostname, and password. Of course, since they are already in (or will be in shortly) your wp-config.php file, there is no need to put them somewhere else, too.