Change Database to phpMyAdmin

Let’s start with this:

My experience with programming is minimal.

If that’s the case, stop right there and don’t change anything.

I am wanting to change the standard database that wp-members (inside the wordpress files “Users”) set’s up.

“users” is not a file; it’s a table and it’s not created by WP-Members but by WP. WP-Members does not set up a database nor any database tables. It uses the WP database tables that are already there. In more technical jargon, it uses the WP database schema.

I am wanting to use phpMyAdmin, as my database because I can back it up easily, I can create multiple linking tables, and the amount of content that will be in the tables will be a lots.

phpMyAdmin is not a database. It is a database management tool for your MySQL database.

You can use phpMyAdmin to manage your WP database. However, unless you know what your are doing, I would limit this to creating backups. For the plugin’s purposes (or any purpose, really), there is no need to be creating additional tables.

The WP tables that are already there are already linked. The plugin uses the wp_users and wp_usermeta tables. These are linked in a one-to-many relationship, with wp_users storing basic data (username, email, password, user ID) and wp_usermeta storing any custom data linked to the user ID (the primary key for the user from wp_users).

You can’t change this without breaking WordPress. While you could add to it with some programming know-how, you’ve already mentioned that your skills in that area are minimal.