user authentication script

drmanny

Hi, I want to restrict certain folders of my site to registered users. I am a absolute newbie to php, I need php script, where visitors can register themselves, validated after email verification, then access the folders . hopefully with mysql as backend. also lost password and...whatever

I have a large religious educational website, i just added 2 big sections based on php/mysql obviously with help from some php guru (atleast for me) , he is unavailable for the moment.

Any help is appreciated and may god bless you all
regards
Manny

JDcrack

It seems to me that for a newbie this may be a bit too much to start out with.
Have you considered using .htaccess?

Something you may want to read up about (as far as user authentication goes) is:

PHP sessions
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php

And also when storing passwords in a DB you will want them encrypted:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.crypt.php

Some other helpful links:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/features.http-auth.php
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/features.cookies.php

Some ready-made User Authentication scripts and classes:
http://phpuserlogin.oxyscripts.com/
http://www.paphe.com/php/scripts/authlib.php
http://www.phpsecurepages.com/
http://www.php.lt/sqlsession/

I think this should get you going in the right direction

MrAlaska

JDcrack posted all the links you will need to get you started, but it can be overwhelming for the un-initiated.

In an attempt to summarize, your choices boil down to .htaccess, or a session based user authentification system such as native $_SESSION's, or building your own authentification system either from scratch or with the help of available libraries. .htaccess will protect all the files in a directory, the latter will protect script based files. The security of any system is what you build into it.

Or, it is possible to employ a combination of systems. They each have various pros and cons, the signifigance of which is determined by your site use and visitors expected.

Clear now? 🙂

ekiefer

I just downloaded authlib to set up a user login/registration on a site. Is there someone who has a step-by-step instruction on how to install and set up. I'm using GoLive (Mac) and OS X.2, apache server (on same machine). I don't know what the heck I'm doing.