User Name & Password Protection

[polydorsuperjock]

Hi, I'm a very new newbie to web site development. I have taken over the maintenance and development of a small site for a small charity. The existing site is entirely public. The committee would like to have a segment within the site that is viewable only by accredited members.
It has been decided that to enter the confidential pages the member must used both a user name and password, ones that the user selects.
I read some of the posts on this subject but currently I am too new to this subject to understand much of them.
Can anyone recommend a book that covers this subject please?
Regards

[kazecoder]

While I am not sure on the book I can offer a few words of advice.

If your new to web development then my thought is the easiest way to accomplish what you are wanting to do as long as you are on linux hosting is to setup a .htaccess file for the directory that contains the information you want to protect. Often times there should be an icon in the control panel of the website to set this up. The nice thing about this is the protection is server level so its pretty secure.

If you are on windows hosting then you may have to come up with a custom php program that can work with a database.

[polydorsuperjock]

I would like to thank everybody who took the trouble offer advice on this subject. All has been noted for reference.

Thank You

Brian

[PumpkinHead]

If they use a proper hosting service, you may have an option in the hosting control panel to password protect a certain folder.