Thanks so much for your reply! I was able to get through all your steps above until this one: Not knowing which instructions you followed, you may have to change the site url and home url in the hosted database after the import. You can verify this by selecting the wp_options table and checking the values for both fields; they should both be...
where do I find the wp_options table? It does not show up on the hosted server, and i found a .frm file on my desktop, but when I tried to upload it, I could no longer see the file.
Thanks for your help, I am going crazy here and running out of time to get this site live.