Thanks for your replies. Being new to PHP and not having much experience with web sites either you all have been very helpful.  Admittedly, sometimes I can be a little slow to catch on.  I am still not clear on how to connect a PHP application on my remote web server to my local psql.  Apparently there are ways within PHP to make the connection secure and I'll learn how to do that.  But first I need to know if it's possible to make the connection and if it is, how to do it.  My wed server is running Apache, PHP 5.0, and MySQL.
 
Thanks again for all your help.