i hate to tell you this but yes seesions would be the best way to do this. create a page that starts your session and then in the database create some type of session ID that would then corresponde to that person user name. then you query that session ID to see "who's online". you could then write something to control the time the sessions stay active or what ever else you wanted to do. sessions are not hard and are best way to do this.
see php sessions in any book or php site to learn more.
jay
