LinuxPlanet: Setting Up a MySQL Based Website – Part II

[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]

“In my last article covering MySQL and Web servers, I talked
about creating a guest book that would allow our visitors to leave
a message for everyone to see. This was all fine and dandy;
however, there is more that we can do with a Web site using mySQL
and Apache. In this article covering the creation of a
mySQL-based Web site, we’ll be talking about using mySQL as a
user-authentication database.“

“One of the many popular features of a Web site is to create a
“Members Only” section — a section that can be only accessed by
authenticated users. Apache includes facilities to do this without
the help of an external module, but only with a flat file or a
basic database file.”

“A flat file can be useful when you’ll only have a handful of
people, and want an easy way to administer the user list. Since the
password database will be text (similar to /etc/passwd), opening it
in any text editor will allow you to edit user names and passwords.
The drawbacks to flat-file databases? With a large number of
entries, authentication becomes slower and administration becomes
much harder. When using a database file, access times are somewhat
quicker, but administration is harder since the file is not
text-based.”

Complete
Story