phpMyAdmin was (is?) such a great tool and really got me into SQL/MySQL over a decade ago. Not to mention the whole PHP stack was so fun to use and let you iterate quickly and just build stuff with an immediate feedback loop - just reload the page and your updated server-side code is executed.
Your right though, the interface really wasn't too terrible. Was definitely better than what was available for Postgres even a few years later when I first had contact with that.