User authentication

[Chillout]

Hello!

Need some newbie help, if someone can provide it =).

Thing is, I am making a web portal for me and my friends. A sort of "Stay in touch" sort of thing. And therefore, I only want the people I have invited to have access to the portal.
The portal's URL is http://www.mysite.com/portal/, but I don't want this to be accessed directly... instead, I want the users to go to http://www.mysite.com and be presented with a page requiring a password to be able to advance to the portal pages. Pointing the browser to any other URL but www.mysite.com should not be allowed until they have entered a valid password. (The initial password will be the same for everyone)

How do I go about doing this, is there a script that can do it for me?

Thanks!

...Daniel

[undertow]

Read this: http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.http-auth.php. It tells you how to get the little popup "Enter Network Password" box for the client. In some ways, it's easier than writing a regular HTML form, but it all depends on your preferences.