Cannot connect to database on server

1) Do you have same database created in cPanel? If not, first create it.

2) Create a user for that database. cPanel will put root username and underscore as prefix.

Example: your username for cPanel "mike", and you created a database user named "dbadmin".

The user for the database will be: mike_dbadmin

3) Add user to the database. Please read "Define a User's Privileges" section: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/MySQLDatabases

4) Create all the tables. Easiest way to do it is, first export your whole local database with phpMyAdmin and then import it to your live server with phpMyAdmin.

If you still can't connect, try to add your IP to remote access host: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/RemoteMySQL

If still out of luck, then probably firewall in the server is blocking inbound connections to MySQL port (normally 3306). Talk to your host and ask them if they can come with a solution.

I'm not real good at this but encountered a very similar problem a while back.  After several tries, reviews and changes, I learned that I needed to add my login-ID for my web site host ahead of my $database_... and $username_....  This was a requirement of my site host.  The following is the connection file contents (for the sample in the tutorial by Mr Powers).

<?php

# FileName="Connection_php_mysql.htm"

# Type="MYSQL"

# HTTP="true"

$hostname_check_mag = "localhost";

$database_check_mag = "xxxxx_phptest";  (the 'xxxx' is my login ID for my live site host, the 'phptest' is the name of the site )

$username_check_mag = "xxxxx_tester";  (the 'xxxx' is the login ID for my live site host, the 'tester' is the login name for the database)

$password_check_mag = "yyyyyyyy";  (the 'yyyyy' is the password for the database)

$check_mag = mysql_pconnect($hostname_check_mag, $username_check_mag, $password_check_mag) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);

?>

My host uses 'cPanel' for its front end service.

Tom