Don't shoot me please, as my knowledge is not brilliant and my terminology may not be correct either.
Right, having a mess about with phpBB and MySQL on my computer. I'm running Windows 2000 and have set up IIS so I can use http://localhost/. php pages run ok (the php test page and the front pages to phpBB work fine) and after a lot of fiddling about I think I got phpBB to install correctly following this guide. The MySQL was setup differently and I had to RTFM for ages to find out how to create a db, but I think it's running ok.
Now, I can see the front page of the basic phpBB forum, and I can login successfully as the Administrator like I set up, but when I try and actually do something (like look at the basic intro post or go into the control panel) it doesn't load the page. I've left it for like 10 mins and nothing happens. Click back and it goes back, but you can't do anything else. It's like it locks the site.
Anyone have any ideas what I could have done wrong please? Also, need to know of a free host for me to test it online. Don't care about adverts for the time being. Cheers.
:edit: Believe it or not, Lycos' Tripod service has free php and MySQL services.