Yes, I still run Tiger (10.4.) Thanks for the answer. The issue is not the phpMyAdmin folder's owenrship, it is its parent folder: xampfiles. So I assume I need to change ownership of that in order to add a new phpMyAdmin folder.... and then change it back.
Is this (xampfiles owned by 'system") why XAMPP has to be run as root? Is there some reason why XAMPP is set to only run as root, requiring the "sudo" password each time you start Apache?
Anyway, I didn't feel comfortable messing with the ownership of the xampfiles directory so I just unzipped a new version of phpMyAdmin in htdocs called the resulting new verson's folder NewPHPAdmin, copied in the old config file, and invoke it via
http://localhost/NewPHPAdmin. It is no big deal but it would be nice to be able to call it from the Orange start page. Until I know more about XAMPP (in Tiger) I don't want to start messing with it under the hood.
On thing I don't like about MAMPP is how it was organized. I like to have ALL html and php in htdocs. But the XAMPP developers have a lot of their pages in folders in xampfiles (outside of htdocs.) I suppose it helps "isolate" them from the possible user "corruption" of htdocs. I also found the sim links to both etc and htdocs confusing... but I'm sure they did it for a reason. No big deal.
Thanks.
ANC