Well, for your question, you'll get a lot more questions 😉
Where is this site hosted? Do you own the server (physical computer) or have root access ("Own" in "leetspeak") to the server? (You may be able to tell already that I think from a Unix direction, rather than Windows...)
Many hosting companies offer a database to each hosted site. It could be that the machine upon which you intend to host the site already speaks MySQL, PostGreSQL, MSSQL, etc. If that's the case, simply spend time with the PHP [man]manual[/man] and look for some tutorials and/or sample code on the 'Net. Practice faithfully, and in a few weeks you'll be coding SQL queries for databases like you'd be at it for a year or two....
Now, for a different tangent. One of the basic premises of software design is "don't reinvent the wheel" ... IOW, if some code (program?) exists that does what you need it to do, it's almost always less expensive to purchase the code than to write it yourself. May seem counter-intuitive at first, but consider the value of your time against the cost of the software. You'll need to evaluate it pretty thoroughly --- it feels pretty bad to spend a stack of cash on something that almost does what you want. That's one catch. The other, of course, is that sometimes the $$ just isn't there, and that's when you roll up your sleeves and sacrifice some time to gain what you need.
originally posted by chevy4x4trucks
In the future I'll probably want to expand upon that to include viewing order history and such so it's probably easier to plan that from the get go.
You're absolutely right there. Although it can be done, it's best to plan the database schema down to the least details (well, almost) before you construct the database and its tables. I'm no expert on such matters, but there's some reading out there on the subject. Suffice it to say that it's a bit tricky altering databases once they're set up ... just a bit, perhaps, but nonetheless you'll be glad you're not messing around with "Alter Table" statements in some CLI monitor program 9 months from now. (Not that GUI's for most SQL's aren't available ....)
Well, as I said, I'm no expert, I've rambled on long enough....
Good luck.
