A good way to go, if you're running Windows is to download PHPTRIADhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/phptriad/
and you can do all of your building and testing on your local machine, then export your final tables as a text file, load it into PHPMYADMN on your live server and away you go!

For a heap of ready made scripts that might fit the bill, along with tutorials, etc, try
http://php.resourceindex.com/

Welcome to the club!