Site 'Security' with Sessions and Cookies VARS

[dwalker]

Help!

I'd like to implement the use of sessions and cookies for security reasons within a site I'm building. Additionally, I'd like to log session and user information back to my preexisting customer database.

My problem is: I don't fully understand how to store any of the form, parameter, and customer preference information in a manner that I can recall them (whole or in part) when necessary. Do I have to do a
<?php session_register( "somevar" ); ?> for every field in the form, parameter,and click through? And then, how do I save this information so that I can recall it collectively (one or more of the fields within a form) from another page or multiple pages??? I'm told the combination of session variables SID or PHPSESSID and cookie variables are the way to go, but I'm not sure how to properly meld the two together.

Lastly, I'd like to log the session information back to my customer database.

Thank you.
http://www.healthyproductsplus.com/cust/login.php

[dwalker]

What I meant to ask in my earlier post was: are there any really good tutorials out there that demonstrate a more direct approach to melding sessions and cookies within an environment that would include a MySQL database?

Additionally, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could give me a jump start in the right direction in terms of saving form variable information to a session.

Thank you.