WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Understanding How PHP and MySQL Work Together

WordPress uses a PHP/MySQL platform, which provides everything you need to create your own blog and publish your own content dynamically, without knowing how to program those pages. In short, all your content is stored in a MySQL database in your hosting account.

PHP is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages. When a visitor opens a page built in PHP, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor's browser. MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL), the most popular language for adding, accessing, and processing data in a database. If that all sounds like Greek to you, just think of MySQL as a big file cabinet where all the content on your blog is stored.

Every time a visitor goes to your blog to read your content, he makes a request that's sent to a host server. The PHP programming language receives that request, makes a call to the MySQL database, obtains the requested information from the database, and then presents the requested information to your visitor through his Web browser.

Here content refers to the data stored in the MySQL database; that is, your blog posts, pages, comments, links, and options that you set up in the WordPress Dashboard. However, the theme (or design) you choose to use for your ...