Site Wide User Authentication

[itrends]

I have done many searches on the forums over the last couple of days, and nothing has really helped me answer my question so here goes (of course I do appologise if this is actually located somewhere) :-)

I have worked quite a bit with PHP sessions, html etc so im not a noob as such. I just really have not worked much with cookies, nor enough with coppermine to know exactly how to accomplish this.

My Question:
Can anyone supply me either links, or information on making use of the cookies / authentication of Coppermine. I have seen mentions of ssi.php etc but that appears to be un supported now and I can't find the file anyway. :-)

I am creating a new site from scratch. I would like it so that when a user logs into coppermine, that's it, they are logged in. I want to be able to check if they are logged in and give them access to other areas of the site using the same cookie. Or display different information on pages (if statements?) based on if they are logged in or not.

Essentially I simply want to know, how do i check if a user is logged in, then how do i display information / use the information base upon this.

Let me give some examples:

User logs in
The site can then display their username or realname anywhere on the site.

User Logs in
Other pages can be made accessible to the user

User logs in
Can add a direct link to their gallery on any page where needed.


If anyone can supply me with some information on this I would be most thankful.

I have worked quite a bit with PHP sessions, html etc so im not a noob as such. I just really have not worked much with cookies, nor enough with coppermine to know exactly how to accomplish this.

I wish to use coppermine as the authorisation for the site :-)

I look forward to hearing from someone soon.

Kind Regards,
David

[Nibbler]

Something like this maybe ?

[itrends]

Indeed :-)

Thank you muchly!!