Creating the MySQL database
We need a way to hold all of the information about our players and the system. If we didn't store this information in a logical manner, players would need to keep starting over with our system each time they logged in. This does not make for a good system.
In our environment we opted to use the open source database MySQL. If you installed the WAMP server in the previous chapter, you should already have MySQL installed. Here we will begin using it.
Our WAMP installation includes phpMyAdmin, shown in the following screenshot. This is a tool to create and administer databases directly from a web browser.
We should expect to see the main screen for the PHP Admin tool after clicking on the phpMyAdmin option on the WAMP server menu:
Let's create the main Point database. Click on the Databases menu. Name the database VuPoint and click on Create. You can see our list of databases on the left:
We can find our newly created database in the database list on the left-hand side...
