Ok, I have my localhost server working nicely. I can use the user folders (/~user) to host web content including php scripts. phpmyadmin works fine as well. All is good. Or at least it was.

I looked into fixing the "root with no password" security issue, so I fixed that by deleting the root name from the config.inc.php file in phpmyadmin, and by adding myself as a fully privileged user in mysql. I wanted to add mysql users so that I don't even have to use the root user to access databases. This all is working fine so far except for one thing...I can't do anything in phpmyadmin anymore. It shows me logged in as "wwwrun@localhost" and I have absolutely no access to change anything. I see no "logout/login" options in phpmyadmin, so what do I do??

You'll need to change the authentication type. If you set it to http then it should let you log in as the user you like. Just make sure you follow the documentation here:
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/documentat...tication_modes

Yeah, I've done that. In fact, that's how it's set right now. I tried, cookies, config, and http. No change.

One other thing though, my config.inc.php file, was NOT in the phpmyadmin folder. It was in the "libraries" folder. I copied it to the root phpmyadmin folder and it accepted the changes (deleting the root user), so I assume it's reading from it, but I'm still always logged in as wwwrun@localhost instead of as the user "tom" as setup in mysql.

Ok, I got it. The only thing I did, was delete the config.inc.php file from the libraries folder. I also noticed, that my real config.inc.php file still had "config" set instead of "http" for the authentication method. I don't know how I missed that, but apparently the whole problem was simply my overlooking this setting.

So thanx for the help, you did cause me to look at it yet again, and now it works! Thanx again!