From Juda

I am writing to you about how I have been learning PHP and I would like to make a message board.
I dont know enough about PHP to save stuff to a database.
Can you please teach me the keywords in the next class?
Also could you please tell me what type of database this server uses?
Please tell me the specific type of MySQL. Thanks, Juda.
PS: for some reason when I try to put this in PHP it all gets commented out!