But using phpmyadmin will not teach him mysql. That was my point!
And in all honesty he should not be using the XAMPP stack as it adds in too many bells and whistles I am sure he does not even grasp yet, he should be on a WAMP stack. Then adding more GUI's on top further hinders learning things properly.
And he still has yet to even discuss the issue about his old host and that they flag his code as hacking/cracking/scanner type site. If it is not that type of a site then he has way larger problems to solve before continuing on. You never bring compromised code into another environment unless it is segregated and locked internally from accessing all other resources.