Untitled

// function to report a viewer-friendly error message 
function sql_error($M_ERROR='') {
  $M_ERRNO = (mysql_errno()) ? mysql_errno() : 0;
  $M_ERROR = ($M_ERROR != '') ? $M_ERROR : mysql_error();
  echo "<div style='color:orangered; margin-left:4em'>error number " .$M_ERRNO. ": " .$M_ERROR. "</div>";
  return true;
}

then you can use the function thus:

// function to connect to MySQL
function mysqlConnect() {
global $host, $user, $password;
$link = @mysql_connect($host,$user,$password);
  if (!$link) {
    $M_ERROR = mysql_error()."<br /><br />Could not connect to $host";
    sql_error($M_ERROR);
    return 0;
  } else {
    return $link;
  }
}