A lot of the information created in your Mahara will be stored in a database. Mahara offers support for both PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. However, we prefer to use PostgreSQL. If you are interested, see http://Mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=302 for a discussion on why PostgreSQL is preferred to MySQL.
The way you create your database will depend on who you have chosen to host your Mahara. Sometimes, your web host will provide a graphical user interface to access your server database. Your web host may not even allow PostgreSQL, in which case MySQL is the way to go for you.
For smaller Mahara installations, we prefer to use something like phpPgAdmin, which is a software that allows you to manage PostgreSQL databases over the Internet. See http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net for more information on setting up phPgAdmin on your server.
Also, see, http://www.phpmyadmin.net/ for phpMyAdmin, which works in a very similar way to phpPgAdmin, but operates on a MySQL database.
