This might be ridiculously easy for you.. but I've been struggling with this for an hour.. :( <?php $connect = mysql_connect("localhost:8080", "root", "mypassword"); echo($connect);?> This is the code that I'm trying to run - you can see that I'm using 8080 as my port number and, of course, I have html codes as well. However, it gives me the following error msgs whenever I try to open the php file. ==================================================================================== Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: MySQL server has gone away in C:\wamp\www\php_sandbox\index.php on line 2 Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Error while reading greeting packet. PID=4932 in C:\wamp\www\php_sandbox\index.php on line 2 Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: MySQL server has gone away in C:\wamp\www\php_sandbox\index.php on line 2 ===================================================================================== I don't know... what's wrong with this. Is it because of the port number?