Mysql Field Types Wont let me go over 255

[krap 0]

i got this forum software and i installed it and they text limit is 255 characters (it's a forum for mobile web on mobile phones so thats ok) and i wanted to increase it to 2000 as my members make large posts..
So i go to phpmyadmin, find the field where the post goes in which has the type "varchar(255)" so i edit this and put length/values to 2000 and i get this error:

MySQL said:  #1074 - Too big column length for column 'text' (max = 255). Use BLOB instead

so i look in the list and find BLOB then try and i get this:

#1170 - BLOB column 'text' used in key specification without a key length

if any1 knows what im doing wrong please post here

thanks in advance
krap

[alperuzi 0]

the maximum length for a varchar in mySQL is 255I would use a Text field, which has a limit of 65,000 bytesbut I don't know if the forum script you use will support that, you may need to edit the scripts too.

[beeseven 0]

You can use a BLOB or TEXT, but to specify length you'd have to check it in the PHP. Actually, all the length does is specify a cutoff point. If you put "abcdefghijk" into a VARCHAR(5), it'll be stored as "abcde".

[Mike 0]

Yeah, if you use varchar() it it only goes from 0-255. I would pust something like 'text', and you most likely won't fill that one up.. Or BLOB like the others said; I just don't like using blob. >_>; Or if the text in the field is just going to be numbers, and not any writing or anything, you could use 'bigint' which is from -REALBIGNUMBER to +REALBIGNUMBER >_____>