phpMyAdmin basics: browsing, editing, import and export

phpMyAdmin is the database GUI available from cPanel on your hosting account. Use it to browse tables, edit individual rows, or move a whole database in or out via SQL dump. The fastest way in: portal at Services → your hosting → cPanel tile, then open phpMyAdmin from the Databases section. Always back up before you edit anything by hand.

The two operations people actually need most are: editing a single row in wp_options or wp_users without breaking the site, and exporting or importing a full database for a migration or a local copy.

Browsing and editing safely

In the left sidebar, click your database name to expand its table list, then click a table to browse its rows. A few rules keep this from going wrong:

• Click Browse, not Edit in the sidebar, to look at data first. Use the pencil icon on a row to edit only that row.
• Never edit wp_options or wp_users unless you know exactly which row and column you're touching. These two tables hold the site URL, admin password hash, and site-wide settings, so a wrong edit can lock you out or break every page.
• For WordPress: siteurl and home in wp_options (where option_name matches) control the URLs WordPress generates for every asset and link. Edit the option_value field directly if you need to change a domain without going through wp-admin, for example after a migration to a temporary URL.
• To reset a WordPress admin password by hand: find the row in wp_users, click edit, and in the user_pass field paste a new value while setting the Function dropdown next to it to MD5. Leaving Function as "none" stores your password as plain text, which won't authenticate and is a security problem on its own.
• Use SQL tab queries instead of manual row edits when you're changing many rows at once, for example a bulk find-and-replace on URLs across wp_posts. Manual edits don't scale past a handful of rows.
• Always run a manual backup before editing production data. The Export tab (below) takes under a minute for most databases and gives you a rollback point.

If you're not confident hand-editing a live database, our backup options page covers restoring a database from a recent daily backup instead, which is often safer than trying to undo a bad manual edit.

Exporting a database

Exporting gives you a .sql file: a plain-text dump of every table's structure and data, which you can import elsewhere or keep as an offline backup.

1. Select the database in the sidebar (not an individual table, unless you only want one table).
2. Click the Export tab.
3. Choose Quick export method with SQL format for a standard full dump. Use Custom if you need to exclude specific tables, compress the output (gzip is worth it for large databases), or export only structure without data.
4. Click Go. Your browser downloads the .sql (or .sql.gz) file.

For very large databases, a browser-based export can time out or produce a file too large to handle comfortably. In that case, use mysqldump over SSH if your plan includes shell access, or ask support to pull one for you.

Importing a database

1. Create the destination database first, if it doesn't already exist, from the Databases tile in the portal or the phpMyAdmin sidebar.
2. Select that database in the sidebar.
3. Click the Import tab.
4. Choose your .sql or .sql.gz file and click Go.

Import size is capped by the same PHP settings that limit file uploads generally. If a large dump fails partway through, check upload_max_filesize and post_max_size on the PHP tile: our guide on increasing the maximum file upload size covers raising both, plus max_execution_time, which matters here too since a big import can run long enough to get killed at the default 30-second script limit.

When you're migrating a whole site

If this export/import is part of moving a site to Flashcloud rather than a one-off edit, our team can do the entire migration, files, databases, email, and DNS, for free: see free site transfer from your old host. It's usually less error-prone than a manual phpMyAdmin export/import, especially for WordPress sites with serialized data in wp_options, where a plain text find-and-replace on URLs can corrupt the database if done wrong.

When to contact support

If an import fails with a cryptic SQL error, a table won't repair, or you've made an edit in wp_options or wp_users that locked you out of the site, open a ticket from Support → New ticket in the portal. A real person can pull a recent backup or look at the raw error rather than you guessing at fixes in a broken database.