MariaDB
MariaDB
HelioHost offers MariaDB which is the fully free, fully open source version of MySQL.
MariaDB is a very handy tool available to webmasters who want to take advantage of dynamic web pages which run on languages such as PHP, as well as software like WordPress that may have been manually installed (not installed using Softaculous).
More information about MariaDB can be found at Wikipedia and the official MariaDB website.
Plesk Procedure
The following are a list of steps to follow to create a MariaDB in Plesk.
Before you take advantage of MariaDB, you will need to create a database and a user to work with. To access the 'Databases' section of Plesk, use the button available left hand menu. Depending on your resolution (e.g. mobile devices), there may be a menu icon ( ☰ ) that you have to click to display the menu. You can also access the 'Database' section from the 'Websites & Domains' section.
Creating the Database
In the 'Databases' section of Plesk, there's a button '+ Add Database'. On smaller resolutions, the menu icon will appear. On the resulting page, you will have to fill out a form.
General Section
The first section is general. There are three items in this section.
The first item is the database name, this is prefixed with the format'<Username>_'.
The second item is the server. This will be a dropdown of the available database servers. From this dropdown select 'localhost:3306( default for MariaDB )'.
The third item is a drop down to associate your database with a site. The default is no related sites. From this dropdown you can associate your database with any website you have set up. This is a convenience feature to help associate a database with a website and is not required.
User Section
The next section is 'Users'. In this section there are 5 items as well as two buttons.
The first item is a checkbox to indicate whether or not you want to add a user while creating your database. This is checked by default.
The second item is the username, this will have a prefix of the same format as the database name.
The third item is the password. This item is associated with the two buttons. The 'Generate' button will generate a password for you. The second button will display the password on your screen. Generated passwords are hidden by default unless the show button is pressed. You can also enter any password you require. Once a password is entered a 'Password Strength' meter will appear. There is a help button '(?)' with more details regarding this meter.
The fourth item is a confirm password. This must match the password.
The fifth item is a checkbox to indicate a 'User has access to all databases within the selected subscription'. This means the user can access all databases listed in the main 'Databases' section.
The sixth item is access control. You have three choices. You can allow local only connections. You can allow connections from any IP, or you can submit a list of IPs or FQDNs. This list supports wildcards and examples are provided.
Once these sections are complete, you can click 'OK' to create the database.
DB User Permissions
In order to change user permissions and privileges, you have to navigate to the user. This is done from the 'Databases' section. A list of users will be listed next to your databases. Click on the user you want to modify to proceed to the 'Edit Database User' screen.
DB User Editing
The first section of this screen is identical to the [user section](#plesk-create-step2) while creating the database and will not be covered here.
There are two items available while editing a user that aren't available while creating a database.
You can assign roles: Read & Write, Read Only, Write Only, and Customer. There are also data/structure access which will specify which privileges a DB user has. See the MariaDB privileges documentation for more details on the individual privileges.
Accessing the Database
Below are some tips to connect to your database either through Plesk via phpmyadmin, locally via code, or remotely through code or other client (e.g. MariaDB's mysql command line or some other utility such as a GUI listed on the MariaDB website).
Local connections
If you are connecting locally, then your 'HOST' is 'localhost'. Your database name is the name you specified, but prefixed with your Plesk username and then an underscore (e.g. PLESK_USERNAME_DATABASE).
Managing the database with phpMyAdmin
By using the phpMyAdmin button on Plesk's homepage, you can control and manage your databases and issue commands. More information about phpMyAdmin is available at the official site.
Connecting Remotely
- Login at https://heliohost.org/login/
- Click continue to Plesk.
- Click databases in the left navigation panel.
- If you haven't already created a database see Creating the Database above, otherwise click the database you wish to connect to remotely.
- Click the database user near the bottom of the database tile. It will be your main account username followed by an underscore followed by whatever you picked when creating the database.
- Locate the access control section near the bottom of the page.
- By default databases are created with local connections only for increased security. If you want to allow any IP address to connect select the 'Allow remote connections from any host' option. If you want to allow only one or a few IP addresses to connect select the 'Allow remote connections from' option, and enter the IP address(es) into the box that appears.
- Click 'Ok' at the bottom of the page to save the changes.
- The host you use will be determined by which server you're on. Look at the URL of the Plesk page you're on currently, and if it says 'morty.heliohost.org/smb/database/list' that means you'll be using 'morty.heliohost.org' as your host value.
- The remote MariaDB port is 3306 for all of our plans.
- The full remote MariaDB config will look something like this:
Example Remote MariaDB Values
host=morty.heliohost.org port=3306 username=username_user database=username_db
Make sure you update the above host based on which server you're actually on, make sure you update the username to match the actual username you created, and make sure you update the database name to match the actual database you created. This is just an example, and if you copy/paste it exactly as displayed without updating it to real values it won't work.
Example Code Links
Official MariaDB docs:
Python SQLAlchemy module example
Offical PHP and Python module docs:
You can find other language examples using your favorite search engine.