I have a db full of articles that have a category field with the name of the category the articles are from.

Is there anyway to select and display just the different types of categories on the db?

What I am trying to do is make a list of the categories in the database without already knowing which categories there are so I can make a menu with links.

Somebody said Joins do this but I am not familiar with them.

Just found out that joining isn't the answer. I only have one table...

You can actually join a table to itself. However, if I understand what you want, you don't need to use a join.

If you have a table with a category column, and you want to get a list of distinct categories, the following query will work (note: You can only select the column that you want a distinct list of. If you add a second column to the SELECT list, it will be considered when looking for distinct results.)

SELECT DISTINCT category FROM your_table GROUP BY category

BEAUTIFUL. Thanks so much.

what does "GROUP BY" do?

If it is selecting distinctly then why do you need to group them when there would be nothing to group it with?

exactly

this is too much -- SELECT DISTINCT category FROM your_table GROUP BY category

it should be either this -- SELECT DISTINCT category FROM your_table

or this -- SELECT category FROM your_table GROUP BY category