OK, I know when I am beaten and have to ask for help. I am trying to load Drupal 4.5.0 onto a virtual hosted server and can't get it to function at all. Drupal looks to be a possible solution for my needs but the excitement of finding it is fading with my lack of success. I have checked out other CMS stystems and run one on e107. With all of the others (PHPNuke, PostNuke, etc) loading and set up was easy as they have installers.
My situation is that I cannot use MySQL Administrator or similar tools to access my database. I only have the admin tool the host supplies. This lets me view and edit tables and run SQL queries - though I do not have a clue about that! - but I have no control over top level stuff. I can only create one database per domain which is created with full user permissions I believe. I had no problem creating a database and importing the database.mysql file, which looks fine.
The PHP is v4.3.8 and the only difference in the configuration as far as I can see is that "session.save_handler" is set to "files", though this is overwritten by the .htaccess file so it shouldn't make any difference.
I have correctly (I believe) defined the db_url and base_url - and have tried various other deperate options in case! I have tried loading it to my local root and into a directory (with suggested alterations from various postings) but nothing works.
I have looked and searched through the site and forums for answers but to no avail. Nothing quite answers my problem.