This is quite a noobish question, I have searched for a few hours now and I know this has to be simple. I am using XAMPP and I am trying to learn some more about using PHP and mySQL together. When I create the DB and the table for information to store, I tried insert info to the table and it stores it as a .dat file rather than text. I know this has to be with how I am setting up the table or the DB but I have gone through things and I think I am just skipping over something. * Apache/2.2.12 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.12 OpenSSL/0.9.8k mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.0 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.0 * MySQL client version: 5.1.37 * PHP extension: mysqli that is the phpmyadmin info.