especially since I'm a php/mySQL newbie, would it be easier to use if I had phpMyAdmin?
Much. Even for those of us that are not new to php/mysql, phpMyAdmin saves allot of time... though I've noticed the last release or two the script have gotten buggier and buggier. When you where inserting data in the older versions, it used to automatically turn single quotes (') in to escaped single quotes (') so that you won't get an insert error from mysql. However, in the latest version (that I use) it doesn't do this anymore. Oh well.
Thanks, also, I dont really know where to begin with mySQL. Are there any preferences that need to be set to off/on, and any other things I should do before starting a test project?