PHP/MySQL newbie question.

I have a database I've imported into my local phpmyadmin. However it seems I can't access it from my a php application. The connection string seems right and when I try to authenticate user credentials to access database information, no problems.

However authenticate everyone and knows when I put in fake credentials. Still it won't pull any other information from the database.

For instance, once a users login they should see something like, "Hello username", that kind of thing. At this point I see "Hello" without the username. Any ideas what i might be missing?