I’m not sure I can give a text book definition, but generally speaking, if you are connecting a script to a database that is physically hosted on that server, then it’s a “localhost”, whereas, if you were connecting to a database that is physically hosted at another address, you would replace “localhost” with that address. That’s why 99/100 times, you don’t adjust that setting in wp-config, as you are installing WP on the server where the DB resides.
More generally, ‘localhost’ is what some piece of software is presently running on, i.e. the local host computer. If the pc you are working on runs a server app (typically a web server like Apache, but it can be any kind of server, including MySQL), it’s the localhost. For our purposes and your wp-config.php settings, it means the server WordPress is on also interfaces with a MySQL server (locally).
I knew someone could come along and better verbalize it 🙂
I am still not able to install thsi on my server. My website http://www.bigfatknot.com is hosted on http://www.1and1.com so I have FTP the folder “wordpress” onto the mail directory. I made the changes to the wp-config.php as follows:
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘bigfatknot’); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘bigfatknot’); // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘passw0rd’); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
When I go to that URL I get this page 🙁
http://bigfatknot.com/wordpress
What am I doing wrong?
Where would I get all those values from? I dont know MySQL username?
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘bigfatknot’); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘bigfatknot’); // Your MySQL username
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘passw0rd’); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
“Where would I get all those values from?“
From your host. Here’s their FAQ documents on MySQL:
http://faq.1and1.com/scripting_languages_supported/mysql_database/
Great Thnaks, it worked 🙂
