need help getting started

[Joshua Morley]

I'm trying to display, on a web page, information from a database. For documentation, my web host has links to mysql and myphpadmin pages, which is what brought me here. I've put up a small test database via the provided myphpadmin web app and am now trying to write script to query it and display the information. I've spend hours poking around online, and every tutorial and example I've found would have me put my credentials, unencrypted, right into the script. Some of them warn that this is for local use only for learning purposes. None of them explain how to do it for real. Would someone please point me in the right direction?

In case I'm barking up the wrong tree, here's what I'm trying to do: We teach classes. When someone is looking at the description of a class on our site, I want them to see only the class dates that are taking place in the future. I'd like to accomplish this without having to manually edit the pages every day. When we add classes, I'd like to be able to add them in one place and then have them displayed as needed throughout the site. I could easily accomplish this in a non-web application. I just need to learn how to do it for our web site. I'm not too worried about security at this point. I wouldn't want anyone to be able to make any changes, but if someone were to have unfettered read-only acess to the entire database, well, that would be fine because it's all essentially advertising.

If I'm asking in the wrong place, I'd appreciate knowing where to ask. The only thing I have to go on is that my web host pointed me to mysql.com.