I want my website to display, via echo the currently logged on user. So for example if someone logs with the username John, on the following page I would like to echo "Hello John". I know this is possible with cookies but it seems insecure, is there an easier way.

Thanks for the help guys


Also, I should post this in a different post really but is it possible to use a similar command to display all users currently logged onto the website (obviously this ability would only be give to a root user who will have higher level abilities than standard clients).

For the first one use Sessions. For the second write the logged on users to a file along with their last access time (therefore ignore those beyond a certain time)