====== setup adminer (phpMyAdmin alternative) ======
phpMyAdmin has grown into such a powerful tool with so many features that it is often a complete overkill. Adminer on the ohter hand is focused on being sleek and simple, with less features but quick to get up and running. it usally does the basic stuff that most people use phpMyAdmin for. 

here are the few steps needed to set it up. 

===== If you already have a working webserver with PHP =====

download the latest version of adminer to your document root
  wget http://www.adminer.org/latest.php -O adminer.php

create an admin user as described below and then access your adminer.php file to see the gui

===== ubuntu: if you start with a plain installatin =====
actually installing adminer in ubuntu is probably one of the fastest ways to get a full LAMP stack up and running in a matter of seconds: 
  apt install adminer mariadb-server
this installs all you need, next enable the adminer config in apache 
  a2enconf adminer
  systemctl reload apache2

follow the next paragraph to add an admin user and finally open ''http://myserver/adminer'' to get to the gui

===== create a mysql admin user =====
on the command line as root: 
  mysql 
  CREATE USER 'admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass';
  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

finally open your adminer.php in a browser and login with your admin user, it's as simple as that :)