Getting Started with phpMyAdmin - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 6

Installing on a local Windows server (Apache, IIS)
The procedure here is similar to that described in the Installation on a remote server
using a Windows client section, except that the target directory will be under our
DocumentRoot (for Apache) or our wwwroot (for IIS). Of course, we do not need to
transfer anything after modifications are made to config.inc.php (described in the
next section), as the directory is already on the web space.
Apache is usually run as a service. Hence, we have to ensure that the user under
which the service is running has normal read privileges to access our newly created
directory. The same principle applies to IIS, which uses the IUSR_machinename user.
This user must have read access to the directory. You can adjust permissions in the
Security/permissions tab of the directory's properties.
Configuring phpMyAdmin
Here, we learn how to prepare and use the configuration file containing the parameters
to connect to MySQL, and which can be customized as per our requirements.
Before configuring, we can rename the directory phpMyAdmin-3.4.5-all-
languages to something like phpMyAdmin or something easier to remember. This
way, we and our users can visit an easily remembered URL to start phpMyAdmin.
On most servers, the directory part of URLs is case-sensitive so we should
communicate the exact URL to our users. We can also use a symbolic link if our
server supports this feature.
In the following examples, we will assume that the directory has been renamed
to phpMyAdmin .
The config.inc.php file
This file contains valid PHP code, defining the majority of the parameters (expressed
by PHP variables) that we can change to tune phpMyAdmin to our own needs. There
are also normal PHP comments in it, and we can comment our changes.
Be careful not to add any blank line at the beginning or end of
the file; this would hamper the execution of phpMyAdmin.
Note that phpMyAdmin looks for this file in the first level directory—the same one
where index.php is located.