I was moving a wordpress install from our Graphic Designer's desktop this morning.  I was doing fine following these instructions, http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Using_phpMyAdmin,  until I tried to import the DB from my export.  Then I got the following error: 

ERROR 1064 at line 20: You have an error in your SQL syntax.  Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=4' at line 13

Upon further examination of the .sql file I found that the old DB was a 5.0 instance of MySQL:

-- Server version: 5.0.19

And then I logged into the destination DB and found that it was older than the developer's box:

root@host [/home/example]# mysql -h localhost -u example -p example
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 288107 to server version: 4.0.27-standard

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> quit

So I found that I needed to set backwards compatibility in the phpMyAdmin to MYSQL40.  Did that, reimported and whammo we're up and running.  I have very little experience with Wordpress, but feel free to ask questions.  Perhaps I'll have learned more by the time you ask.

Tags: mysql, wordpress