I have downloaded the latest versions of Apache, PHP and mysql. Have PHP connected to Apache okay, but cant seem to connect to mysql, keep getting an http500 error. Looked in all the books I have and searched the net, but cant seem to connect.

Any help will be gratefully received..thanks.

You need to enable socket / TCP/IP connections in my.cnf

check out the examples on mysql.com

you can also print out the error mesages you get as a result for a more detailled error message.

Thanks chaps, I will try the things you have advised.

Someone on another site mentioned xampp, I installed it and had the same problem so uninstalled it. I will look into EasyPHP.

All part of the learning process

Incidentally, when I tried running a new CMS script on my local server the other day I found out that there was a small compatibility bug between the latest releases of MySQL and PHP, which most people seem to have got around by downgrading from PHP 5.2 to PHP 5.1.2 – unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember what the bug was (but it did affect connection to MySQL), or which PHP patch I used, sorry.

500 error could mean a lot of things from the server not being configured through to bad permissions on scripts or a typo.

EasyPHP and the likes are good if you're just wanting to learn the language. If you're actually wanting to do something proper though, its always best to program direct on the hosting system as configuration differences can be a killer. I once had two systems (test and live) supposedly configured the same yet the test one obeyed the standard php upload command and the live wouldn't. I had to manually write the upload to temp, copy and delete temp to get it to work!