Readme file for Perl Module WWW::Authenticate The intent of this module is to provide an easy method to authenticate web site users utilizing session cookies and a MySQL user table. Prerequisites: CGI::Cookie MySQL This program is copyright 2001 D. Scott Barninger and Chris Fleizach and is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0. See the accompanying LICENSE file. Installation: To install in the usual site library directory do the usual: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install You may specify a different install location by: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/my/chosen/dir in which case you should modify the shebang line of any scripts calling the module: #!perl -I /my/chosen/dir You may also install the module manually in the cgi-bin directory of your server. It's all pure perl so copy the Authenticate.pm file to a subdirectory WWW in your cgi-bin, e.g. /home/mysite/cgi-bin/myscript.cgi /home/mysite/cgi-bin/WWW/Authenticate.pm After installing the module you must create the user table. The program create_user_table.pl in the tools/ subdirectory of this distribution will create the table. Use a text editor to edit the configuration variables of the script for your MySQL installation, upload it to your web server, chmod 755 and execute it from a shell prompt. It will create the following table: id INT(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, user_name CHAR(10), password CHAR(10), session TEXT, email CHAR(40). You will have to create any user entries in the table you need. If you want other columns for your user table add them to the table definition in the script but don't alter id, user_name, password, or session columns. For guidance in using the module functions see the pod documentation embedded in the module and the sample application cgi_authenticate.cgi in the samples/ subdirectory of this distribution.