Could someone get me started in the right direction here.

I have a database thats going to fetch all records from the database, for browsing. I dont want the database to get HUGE and display lie 2k results at a time so i wanted to do only 20 at a time and make a link for the next 20. How could i go about doing that?

Not really something that can be answered in a short time for a forum member. Try a google search for a pagination tutorial.

Check out MySQL Limit, at Google.

Thx for the links. i have everything pretty much working but its displaying everything not just 5 at a time as i am asking ( i said 20 but the db only has a limited amount of data right now). I cant seem to find whats wrong. when i click the 1,2,3 links the page in the address bar says it has changed but all fields are still the same. Wanna take a look

<?php 

    require_once('Connections/nwodb.php'); 
    @mysql_select_db("nwo") or die("ERROR--CAN'T CONNECT TO DB"); 
     


    $limit          = 5; 	               
    $query_Recordset1    = "SELECT * FROM person ORDER BY LastName ASC";     
    $result_count   = mysql_query($query_Recordset1);     
    $totalrows      = mysql_num_rows($result_count);
   

    if(empty($page))
	{ 
        	$page = 1; 
        } 
         

    $limitvalue = $page * $limit - ($limit);  
    //$query_Recordset1  = "SELECT * FROM person ORDER BY LastName ASC";         
    //$result = mysql_query($query) or die("Error: " . mysql_error());  
       
       $Recordset1 = mysql_query($query_Recordset1, $nwodb) or die(mysql_error());
       $row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_assoc($Recordset1);
       $totalRows_Recordset1 = mysql_num_rows($Recordset1); 
    if(mysql_num_rows($Recordset1) == 0)
	{ 
        echo("Nothing to Display!"); 
        } 

    $bgcolor = "#E0E0E0"; // light gray 

    echo("<table>"); 
    echo("<tr><td>");
    echo("Member_ID");
    echo("</td><td>");
    echo("Last Name");
    echo("</td><td>");
    echo("First Name");
    echo("</td></tr>");
     
    while($row_Recordset1 = mysql_fetch_array($Recordset1))
    { 
        if ($bgcolor == "#E0E0E0")
	   { 
            	$bgcolor = "#FFFFFF"; 
            }else
	      { 
                 $bgcolor = "#E0E0E0"; 
              } 
  	
    			echo("<tr bgcolor=".$bgcolor."><td width=\"20%\">");
    			echo ($row_Recordset1["Person_ID"]);
    			echo ("</td><td width=\"40%\">");       
    			echo($row_Recordset1["LastName"]);
           	        echo ("</td><td>");        
    			echo($row_Recordset1["FirstName"]); 
    			echo("</td></tr>"); 
    } 

    echo("</table>"); 
//shows the previous # entries link
    if($page != 1){  
        $pageprev = $page--;          
        echo("<a href=\"pagation.php=$pageprev\">PREV".$limit."</a> ");  
    	}else
          { 
        	echo("PREV ".$limit." "); 
    	  } 
//shows the number of pages that can be selected from
    $numofpages = $totalrows / $limit;      
    for($i = 1; $i <= $numofpages; $i++)
      { 
        if($i == $page)
          { 
            echo($i." "); 
           }else
             { 
                echo("<a href=\"pagation.php?page=$i\">$i</a> "); 
             } 
          } 

//shows the next # enties link
    if(($totalrows % $limit) != 0)
       { 
        if($i == $page){ 
            echo($i." "); 
        }else
          { 
            echo("<a href=\"pagation.php?page=$i\">$i</a> "); 
           } 
       } 

    if(($totalrows - ($limit * $page)) > 0){ 
        $pagenext = $page++;          
        echo("<a href=\"pagation.php?page=$pagenext\">NEXT ".$limit."</a>");  
    }else{ 
        echo("NEXT ".$limit);  
    } 
     
    mysql_free_result($Recordset1); 

?>

I know its sloppy right now :|