The free hosting service I use doesn't allow MySQL, and I want to make a blog page that would at least know how to separate the data to multiple pages. I got an idea to store all the posts (with html tags) in a txt file and have a script that reads the required portion of it (based on the page number) and putting it into the html file that the user loads (the posts are counted using a special tag that the script will search for).
I'm a complete php noob though and my attempts so far have been unsuccessful. What I'd like to know is: is it possible, is php the right language for it, and do you have some advice on how to get it done, or at least know a good tutorial or php functions/syntax archive.
I searched the web for php information and composed a short script, but it doesn't do anything and I don't know if the problem is syntax related or lack of knowledge about the various nuances of the functions I used.
Here it is in case you want to take a look:

<?php 
            $file = fopen("blogdatabase.txt", "r");
            &page=0;
            $counter=$page*10;
            while(!feof($file) && $counter!=$page*10+1){
                $temp=fgets($file);
                if ($temp=="(post)")
                    $counter++;
            }
            fclose($file);
            echo $temp;
            ?>

Thanks in advance.

Maybe one reason your script example is not working is because you have an amperstand starting a var name. Change to the following:

$page = 0;

PHP will process a text file as html. If it contains <tags> they will be processed and the output rendered.

Follow Mg's suggestion and see if it works.

If your host provide PHP5, maybe the sqlite support is enabled.
You could use it, as it's a real database engine.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.sqlite.php

If you have a blog then you could/should just use rss and parse the RSS with PHP for your page.