Hi! running 4.2 and the latest stable phpMyAdmin 2.8.0.1 of course all the lamp stuff is running. Alexander Dalloz helped me a good bit on the installation which I am truly gratefull. And then I brought it to a point where I can log on from local as any user and give it the anon's password and phpmyadmin will come up w/of course no privileges. I can log on as root from local w/the password and it will come up as root should w/all privileges. coming in from the web is a different story: if one tries to log on from the web to the following url and msg: The URL is this: http://rivers-bend.com/phpmyadmin/index.php The Browser page shows this: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /phpmyadmin/index.php on this server. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at rivers-bend.com Port 80 ok this is 1 of 3 problems I can't seem to get a handle on. 2.Well, ...trying to go by the book...I have anon users all to the same password and root having it's own. I am having trouble having a user w/his own password to have special privileges, i.e. to have control over his own database. I have even tried to set it up in phpmyadmin as root through privileges but no dice. this same user can log on w/his user name and the anon password tho. 3rd and last problem: mysql: mind you I am still trying to get the passwords staight and I know next to nothing about mysql yet. but there is reference to "host" and in the mysql.user file ...well, you know how everything is spelled out in localhost and then in "host" in my case it's rbmain1.rivers-bend.com. What I am concerned about is that I run 2 servers mirroring each other and really makes no difference who's got the ball. the other server is rbmain2 but I am hoping this will take care of itself down the line. whew! I'm sorry for all this. geez thx y'all John Rose