User auth. and cookies

[Anon]

Visitors to my site should be able to browse the site without logging in. If at some stage(say for example when viewing order.php), they want to log, they can then log and the same page is displayed(i.e. order.php). If they don't have username, they'll create one and order.php is shown after sign up. Please help.

[theslinky]

Have a common header which will either display:

You are not logged in. Login Here.

--or--

You are logged in as: <i>member_name</i>. Logout.

this will of course depend on whether they are logged in. For that, you can either use PHP sessions (create and pass session keys once they are logged in), or you can set a cookie which will have a value something like: 1 for logged in and 0 for not logged in. So you can check to see the value and determine whether they need to login.

I suggest you use PHP4 sessions and pass a session ID onto every page (even better: set the sessionID as a cookie). Then in the common header, check to see if a session ID is set. Then check if the session ID is valid before letting the user make any orders, etc).

-sridhar

[Anon]

Frankly, I did not get it. Can u simplify it? and maybe help me with my coding. I'll appreciate it if u do.