MySQL databases - how many?

how many is good for small site

[J64sqs]

I've got a personal/hobby site and I'm considering switching to a hosting company that happens to limit people to 2 MySQL databases for the low-priced plan. They claim that allowing more databases chews up CPU and causes the server to slow down. Is this generally true?

What is a good number of databases to have available for a small site? I ask because I'm still pretty new to this database stuff and don't want to limit my options for the future too much.

[topr8]

I think one is fine

recent discussion [webmasterworld.com]

[mack]

As topr8 said one is generaly enough for most requirements.

Sometimes if you are running pretty complexed databases it is usefull to have a database for each "database" if you get what I mean. :)

Sometimes it can get confusing if you are runing lots of different processes on one db.

Mack.

[txbakers]

one DB is fine, and you can have lots and lots of tables in it.

You can have a different set of tables for various activities if you want.

[krieves]

One reason to have more than one database, is if you need to have separate environments for production and development.

[eggy ricardo]

Also you may want more than one database if you have a database-driven site and then want several off-the-shelf products (ie forums) that need a database (like one friend of mine did for some wierd reason). Trying to put them all in one db could cause problems if you had similar/identical table names for example.

Can't see that making much difference to most people, i know with phpBB at least you can install into any database regardless of whether its empty, and prefix all the tables etc.