Thanks to everyone for the speedy replies – I was stuck in the endless loop issue as discussed elsewhere. I ended up having to delete all my DB’s (zero data anyway), and re-create them with the SQL Wizard in cpanel, which apparently has the option (missing in regular SQL) to give or revoke all permissions…
That worked, but I am still wondering why:
a) WP can not initiate a simple upgrade procedure at version 3 already
and
b) my original DB settings would not work with the web-based creation interface.
This must be frustrating for thousands of users. Why, yes, it is… I just googled it: 7,820 items for “This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.”
Anyway, thanks everyone.
