Hey all,

I'm looking at building a website that allows photographers to login and upload images to galleries, while another type of user can signup and buy images from those photographers. The problem is I've come up against my age-old rival.

I haven't been able to get my head around how to create user accounts and this is obviously something I need to master. It's the passing of data through sessions or cookies that I've never mastered, so that when a user logs into their account they view only their details, and when they order something it's tagged against their profile etc.

Does anyone know of some good reading material on this topic (preferably free), or example code or something? Maybe someone can walk me through it?

I have a couple of great ideas for websites and not knowing how to do this is my stumbling block on all of them. Please help me master it!