Newbie seeking help with logins & account creation in site

[marvc]

I posted this question in another forum.

OK here's the ultimate newbie question(s). Please be patient as I have no formal training on any of this.
What is the process for creating sites and pages that allows a particular user to become a member of the site? Like this one persay where users are given the opportunity to become members of site. Can someone point me to a link where I can learn about the entire process or post questions surrounding this mystery?
My questions are:
1. How is the user information stored, saved, or kept? I agree to become a member of this site, where or how is my info stored or kept? Is there a database involved with storing that informtion? 2. If there is a databse involved, how can I go about finding info on setting up a similar one for learning purposes?
3. I have MySQL running on my w2k/apache server, will this aid in getting me started, or do I need to be looking at other apps?
4. I've yet to create a single web page and I have a ton of books advising on certain valuable subject matters but I feel that I learn better from taking documented procedures and re-documenting them per my individual need. Can anyone point me to some documented procedures for any of the above?
I have a clear and absolute concept that I want to relay on my site, so I'm not looking to "copy" anyone's work. I mainly need "startup" feedback.

Any responses are appreciated.

[firepages]

user authentication can be achieved in several ways, none of which are the 'best' , each having its merits...

IF you end up with host running the apache webserver (and probably MySQL) running as well then you get the full choice.


where to store the username and passwords ?
1)database
2)flat(text) files

how to access that data on a page by page basis
1)session data
2)cookies
3)HTTP_AUTHENTICATION (.htaccess)

I would suggest you take a peek at the tutorials at www.devshed.com, www.sitepoint.com & www.phpbuilder.com , all have excellent articles on all of the above, Feyd has some great .htaccess tutorials at http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

as you have apache/mysql running on your machine you can test all of this stuff locally , you can even play with NT authentication using one of several apache modules (mod_sspi is my favourite)