Partitions of a huge table

[Ruben Pdn]

Hi all.

We have a huge database with one table of millions of rows so we plan to do some consolidation 'cos PHP queries are getting slower and slower.

First, we want to split this big table in multiple tables using the datetime field ($year-$month-$day 00:00:00) to create a table for each month (the table contains data for the last 3 years).

I'm not familiar with this process so anyone can give me some tips about which is the best way to split this existing table in multiple tables with their corresponding data?

And which would be the way to schedule automatically the creation of a new monthly table when needed?

I know version 5.1 has some partition management but we do not plan to upgrade in the near future and currently we use 5.0.22.

Thanks everyone.