I'd suggest using forms.Form for a LoginForm containing e.g. username = forms.CharField(max_length=150) password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput)

I'd suggest using forms.Form for a LoginForm containing e.g. username = forms.CharField(max_length=150) password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput) and then a view to instantiate form with request.POST (if request.POST) like: form = LoginForm(request.POST) and then if form.is_valid() you can clean data using username = form.cleaned_data['username'] and the same for password. Then: user = authenticate(request, username=username, password=password) and then check if user is not None then login(request, user) Note that login and authenticate come from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login Hope that helps.