Understanding instances, and databases

  • Hi, this is an extract from the book “Professional WordPress, Design and Development”. I’m trying to understand some terminology related to MySQL,Wordpress, and instances.

    If you want to have multiple WordPress sites on the same server, you can share a single MySQL database instance for all of them provided you configure WordPress to distinguish the MySQL database table names within the MySQL database.

    questions:

    1. Is it a MySQL database instance, the same as a MySQL instance?
    2. Why would i use a singe database instance for running multiple WordPress sites, if I can use multiple databases, with only one MySQL instance?
    3. What is a WordPress instance?

    that’s all!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • The reason one would want to run multiple WP sites (instances) on a single MySQL database (instance) is that on some hosting plans you are only able to have one MySQL database. Using unique table prefixes for each site is one way to accomplish that.

    So then …

    1. A MySQL ‘instance’ would be a single installation of the MySQL Server whereas a MySQL database ‘instance’ would be a single database within that server.

    2. see the first paragraph ??

    3. A WP ‘instance’ would be a single, unique WP ‘site’ or ‘installation’

    Cheers!
    Lyle

    As Lyle mentioned above, there was a time that people had to accommodate two or more web applications in a single database and custom table prefixes made that possible, so yeah it makes sense.

    About instance, English is not my native language, but I comprehend ‘instance‘ as something that has individuality. For example, iPhone 6 is well.. a phone product. But the iPhone 6 with S/N:12345 is an individual phone product and that’s what I’d call an iPhone 6 instance. WordPress is what it is, but your specific WordPress installation is a WordPress instance.

    Now, the fact that we never say “I’d like a Heineken beer instance, please“, but instead instance is only used with IT stuff and that’s not very often, eg “How do you configure your MySQL instance?“, makes me believe that it rather falls into the category of geek jargon than having any other value.

    Perhaps this is wrong, but that’s how I tend to think about it..

    Valve, George,

    Thanks so much for taking the time to reply, an so fast!
    It is great that there are experienced and nice people like you willing to share knowledge.

    Have a great day.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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