Hi

I'm running a Centos-6 server with mySQL and phpbb3

I am trying to create a members only area on the site that
only requires a single login.

I have been able to separate the login procedure of phpbb
and feed it to my own PHP code to login ok but I am not sure
where best to go from here to "lock down" the rest of the site
for members of the forum only.

I have created a "messy" solution that checks on every page
to see if the user is "logged into phpbb" - that is pretty easy
but obviously not a good way to go once the pages and users start
adding up.

I tried using the Apache auth module with "valid-user" in text password
files and .htaccess but that requires logging into apache first and I couldn't intercept the password then to log into the forum at the same time.

I'm going around in circles here a bit and wasting a lot of time testing things
that never seem totally do the job -

What would be the simplest approach - I have php/mysql knowledge but not
much apache internals and I'm ignorant of cookie internals and hashing
(do I need to get into those to do this?)

Can anyone point me in the simplest direction to get this working or suggest
what information I need to read up on.
Obviously I've read the apache docs but the solutions given dont seem to work or help with merging the two processes - I must be missing something I guess
There must be a simple solution I'm sure.

thanks

Sounds like what you need is a mysql database with user logon info and website cookies to keep track of logons for the members only section. htaccess isn't the best way to do what you're trying to do. If you don't know how to set that up yourself or google it then I'd suggest using wordpress and a decent wordpress theme to do it for you.