if user exist -> go back an chnge it

[ovisopa]

Hello ppl,
I must made a simple login sistem for a site (there is not important data so I don't need to make it verry complex, ) and I don't know how to verify if user exist in the database, can you give me an ideea.

The login sistem i made is using cookies, I'll explain it here, in few words, and if it is a big bug in it pls tell me.
When the user inserts the the username and password and press submit button all the data is processed by a php script, so first I made a SELECT QUERY FORM TABLE where USER = $USER AND pass = $pass and after that an if user and password are ok set cookie with username and expire in 1 hour
and if user and pass are not ok go back to login.

And another thing I wanna ask you , how can i make a search script for my news sistem, I wan't to search in to columns from a specific table, what query I should use and how, Can you help me with this to?

10x alot anyway

see ya

[Duey]

umm try

//mysql conntect etc.
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE user=\"$user\" AND pass = \"$pass\"";
$check = mysql_query($query);
if ($check){
echo "User exists";
}

i think that does it