If you don't feel like reinventing the wheel, look into using a framework like Zend that has this functionality built in. With Zend, you don't have to use the

If you don't feel like reinventing the wheel, look into using a framework like Zend that has this functionality built in. With Zend, you don't have to use the whole framework, you can just plug in the modules you need. Zend_Auth (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.auth.html http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.auth.html) and Zend_Form (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.form.html http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.form.html) should do the trick. It will also handle escaping queries, setting cookies, hashing, etc.