posts and pages not showing up

my operating system is macosx tiger 10.4.2

I recently installed xampp on my computer successfully, I didn’t use the built in apache/mysql setup only because I couldn’t figure out the mysql part of it.
Anyway I got wordpress up and running but when I write a page/post and click on publish, the screen wii reset to a blank “write page/post” and the recently written page does not appear on the actual site under anything. Instead it appears under either the manage post/page section with the status “unpublished”, when I click on the post, the browser will give me the error message:”the page does not exist. the page may have been deleted?”. Help me please.