Preventing users to pass login screen

Anon

Hello,

I've downloaded the "Users management & login script" from this website. Everything is going fine, but I have a problem:

How can I prevent users passing the login screen? Is there any script I can put on top of the page, that checks for cookies or so?

Please help! Thanks!

Regards,
Paul

Anon

One way of doing it is when the user has a valid login then you set a cookie based on that user....btw encrypting is a good thing to check into... then when a user goes to the next page all you do is check if the value of the cookie matches what you would consider a valid loging, if true then continue else redirect to login page using something like "header ("Location: login.php");"

does that sound what you where looking for?

rgds,
Swixy

Anon

Yep, that's what I'm looking for. But, since I'm a newbie with PHP, I don't know how. Can anyone tell me what script to use?

einhverfr

I personally use session variables, and check these to determine the login state.

<?
session_start()
if ($user){
?> Page goes here
<?
} else include "login.php";
// or whatever your login page is.
?>

Cookies could also be used.

As could over 100 variations of this theme.

Anyway, hope it helps.

Anon

I agree sessions in general are better because a user has the ability to turn of cookies therefore blocking a user from accessing an unauthorized but for the most part cookies will do the job pretty well.

Anon

Okay, thanks...

I'm almost there, but I still have two questions:

Should I start the session in the first page (still in the PHP login script), of in the first login page?

What should I define, being $user ?

Thanks!
Paul

einhverfr

Sessions are initialized when you are processing the initial login. This will probably be on the page following the login screen.

Of course, you can initialize the same session earlier, but you only need to do this when you are actually starting to use the information on the backend.\

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers