In Part 1 of this tutorial, we taught you how to pull information from a database in order to set up a forum front end and how to style it with CSS. In this article, you will see how easy it is to build a user authentication system for your forum.

In Parts 3 and 4 you will set up web forms for posting messages and replies. You will also learn how to build a file upload form to enable users to upload their profile photos to the server and how to send automatic e-mail notifications when new replies are posted.

 Note: You can build this application on any of the supported server models—ColdFusion, ASP VBScript, PHP ADODB—using any of the supported databases (including Microsoft Access). The steps are similar. However, for this article, we used PHP 5 and MySQL as the development framework.  

Prerequisite Knowledge

• Part 1 of this tutorial
• Familiarity with the Dreamweaver workspace and interface
• Grasp of basic web application development concepts (no programming skills required)