• An open blogging system is a system that allows anyone to contribute to a blog without having to register. In many cases, it also allows any user to start a new topic that will then have its own replies,  as opposed to just commenting on a topic that the blog owner started. This kind of blog is suitable for people who have just created a website and do not have a lot of web traffic.
  
• A closed blogging system is one that requires registration and allows most users to contribute to a topic instead of creating their own. This kind of blog is suitable for people that have a lot of traffic on their websites.

In the first part of this article, we will create a login script for those of you who prefer a closed blogging system. You can skip this part if you wish and come back next week to check out the next part in this series, which will deal with creating a blog if you are not interested in a closed system. The login script will have a MYSQL table which it will reference to verify the existence of a user at login. It will also have various scripts that will help register a new user and retrieve forgotten passwords.

Login Script

The login script will have the following pages:

• Login.php - Enables users to log in.
  
• Logout.php - Enables logging out.
  
• Register.php - Creates new users.
  
• Password.php - Password recovery.
  
• Messages.php - Handles error messages.

Let's create a table that will gather the following information about a user:

• Username
  
• Password>
  
• Level
  
  •  Admin - This will be the moderator of the system
    
  •  Normal - Normal access rights
    
•  Date_joined
  
• IP Address - Enables us to identify and ban users.
  
• Email - Used for password recovery.
  
• Isbanned - Enable us to ban users

Here's the table:

CREATE TABLE `user` (
  `id` int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `uname` varchar(98) NOT NULL default '',
  `pw` varchar(98) NOT NULL default '',
  `email` varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
  `date_joined` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  `ip` varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
  `level` varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
  `isbanned` enum('yes','no') NOT NULL default 'no',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=11 ;

As you can see from the table layout, the table gathers a lot of information about a user. The most significant item of them all is the "isbanned" field. This field is responsible for checking whether or not a user is banned. The "ip" field stores the IP address of the user, which will be used to reinforce the isbanned status of a user.

Simply copy and paste the code into your PHP admin and run the SQL.