help with user login

[brockie99]

i have been given a rather complicated piece of code from a friend to control user logins, and add a cookie each time they login. However, i am working on a website using a template, and the code he has given me seems to dis-orientate the parts of the template, and i think i need a simple piece of code to do the tick instead.
i know this is quite a broad question, but i don't know much about logins.

Thanks for your help

[Yamakazi]

Against what you want to authenticate?

A text file, a database, LDAP, ...
And try working with sessions instead of cookies. For security reasons.

[brockie99]

i want to authenticate it to a database username and password. i will have multiple users, and it will have to check the details against those in the database.