I want to configure phpMyAdmin to be able to accept one of several different user account logins. Each user would be allocated a specific database and only have access to that.<
use this
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
in place of
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'config';
in your config.inc.php and restart services then authentication process will start for all users and they can do work according to there grants.