Can you explain further? You haven't described anything that would require remote MySQL connections yet. The PHP scripts and the database are normally hosted on the "same" server (they may be physically separate machines, the "sameness" is often virtual). On the off chance that your application and your database are hosted on different servers, both servers would have to allow remote MySQL calls (your application server would have to allow outbound connections; your database server would have to allow inbound connections). You could then use either the IP address of the database server or its fully-qualified name when creating the connection (both would either be available on whatever control panel your db host uses or would be something you'd set up yourself).