These ideas are great and all, but I'm a real PHP newb so I have some questions. It was that I should "look for the user in the database that stores the access info" Could I just use an array for that? Or does it have to be MySQL or something. $_Session['user_id']= (who) - Does that just add the user to the session? And I have some more questions. For instance, once the person has logged in, how do I forward them to the page they now have access to? How do I set the permissions the users have? How do I make it so that a user will not be allowed to a page if they haven't logged in? I guess these are all pretty newb questions..but I appreciate your time and patience.