famous 5 minute install confusing me…

The famous 5 minute install of wordpress asks that I open wp-config-sample.php in wordpad and edit in my own values.

Trouble is, I don’t know what those values should be.

Here’s the config-sample text, with my questions interspersed:

<?php
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database (Do I change this? Can I change this? Or must it always be WordPress?)
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username’); // Your MySQL username
(This MySQL stuff confuses me completely. I need to have a database installed to use WordPress? Does wordpress include that, or must I obtain it and install it separately, or is it supplied by my ISP… or what? Why do I need a database, anyway? I thought wordpress was blogging software…groan…)
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’); // …and password(I gather this would be a password to a database I don’t have. Erk.)
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value

// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = ‘wp_’; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!

// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define (‘WPLANG’, ”);

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define(‘ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__).’/’);
require_once(ABSPATH.’wp-settings.php’);
?>

If anyone can point me at a verbose discussion of installation aimed at the amateur with no knowledge of SQL or PHP, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks for any pointers anyone can provide… Best, Charlie