laffin

Yep, hated them nested queries, but how often to you actually change/add/remove forums? My answer, very few... So doing queries to do this for every user wasnt really an option. So what I did, was built a multidimensional array with the db id's in php and save it somewhere (I used a plaintext file). You can store it under other mechanisms, but I just wanted something simple. So anytime I needed the id's of parent/child forums. I would load up this cache file, and quickly grab the entries for the db.

Not too shure about an OS tutorial, especially on Linux. With the different types of distros out there, ya will find a tutorial concentrating on one distribution. As such its installation procedures. And Believe me some installations of Linux itself can painful. (Not to mention if the network connectivity isnt set up, how to get help). ya may consider using a small linux distro (DSL) or a virtual PC (VirtualBox) to get ya started in linux, cuz a simple setup and accessibility to help is no doubt a requirement for new users.

simplest way, is to use a format supported by both systems. Excel also supports CSV Files. if yer database dun have any binary stuff ya can easily export yer mysql db into a csv file. fputcsv function