- Added some comments/explanation wrt to the "$db_url" settings; this seemed
  to cause problems/confusion.

includes/conf.php

@@ -3,6 +3,13 @@
 
 #
 # Database settings:
+#   Note that the $db_url variable gets parsed using PHP's built-in 
+#   URL parser (i.e. using the "parse_url()" function) so make sure
+#   not to confuse the parser.  In practice, you should avoid using
+#   special characters that are not used in "normal" URLs either.
+#   That is, the use of ':', '/', '@', '?', '=' and '#', ''', '"', 
+#   and so on is likely to confuse the parser; use alpha-numerical
+#   characters instead. 
 #
 
 # $db_url = "pgsql://user:password@hostname/database";
@@ -38,4 +45,4 @@
 #  "<a href=\"\module.php?mod=user\">school</a>",
 #  "<a href=\"\module.php?mod=blog\">work</a>");
 
-?>
\ No newline at end of file
+?>