Is it just me? - you post tutorials on the net, with proven working code and hardware, in use by large numbers of people all over the world. Then someone connects it up differently, blindly bodges about with the code, and wonders why it doesn't work.
This is the LCD equates from the tutorial code, to move it to PortB all you need to do is alter PORTA to PORTB, and TRISA to TRISB - it's that simple. Connect it as shown in the tutorials, alter those two letters - and it works on PortB. Why connect it differently?, if you want it different then write your own code!.
Code:
LCD_PORT Equ PORTA
LCD_TRIS Equ TRISA
LCD_RS Equ 0x04 ;LCD handshake lines
LCD_RW Equ 0x06
LCD_E Equ 0x07