I figured out the IP thing just after i wrote that. the problem was i installed pMachine and it wouldn't recognize everything all together unless i was using Localhost.
got that straight now though.
thanks!
I've followed all the instructions (been struggling for days now) and everything seems to go fine until i try to test and write http://localhost... blah blah into my browser. it claims it can't find it, or that no connection can be made. personal web sharing is enabled, the php is set up...