in reply to (OT) Can't connect to DB

This site is called Perlmonks. Perl is a programming language, much like PHP but distinctly different. This site does not cater to PHP programmers. Unless you want to switch the program over from PHP to Perl, I doubt that you find the expertise you seek here.

A good general start to debug problems is the webserver error log. It usually contains information more relevant to the problem than what the program outputs to the browser.