[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“Authentication is any process by which you verify that someone
is who they claim they are. Authorization is any process by which
someone is allowed to be where they want to go, or to have
information that they want to have.”
“If you have information on your Web site that is sensitive or
intended for only a small group of people, the techniques in this
article will help you make sure that the people that see those
pages are the people that you wanted to see them.”
“This is the first in a two-part series. In this article,
I’m going to cover the standard way of protecting parts of your Web
site that most of you are going to use. In the next part I’ll talk
about using databases, rather than text files, to contain your user
and group information. Somewhere in here I’ll talk about using
things other than usernames and passwords to protect your web site
from “intruders”–such as the IP address of the visitor.“