It is easier for me to simply post a good, working code example rather than debug yours, so here is a simple example of how to connect and query data from a MySQL database using PHP.
[PHP]
<?php
$db_server = "localhost";
$db_user = "root"; //Change if your username is not 'root'.
$db_pwd = ""; //Enter your password here.
$db_db = "mysql"; //Change to the database name you want to use.
if (!$cnn = mysql_connect($db_server, $db_user, $db_pwd)) {
echo mysql_error();
exit();
}
if (!mysql_select_db($db_db, $cnn)) {
echo mysql_error();
exit();
}
$sql = "select help_category_id, name from help_category";
if (!$res = mysql_query($sql, $cnn)) {
echo mysql_error();
exit();
}
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($res, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
echo "
".$row['name']." (".$row['help_category_id'].")\n";
}
?>
[/PHP]