Making Welcome Message, Persistent

[doubledee]

I am adding a "Welcome Message" in my Header file - which is included in every page on my website.

 

If the user is logged in, they would see something like, "Welcome, Debbie!!

 

What is the best approach to take with storing (and checking) the "LoggedIn Status" and "User's Name"?

 

Do I just store them both in a SESSION and access them?

 

Or should I be checking for these two values from my back-end database?

 

It seems to me that a couple of weeks ago I got into some big debate with people about "persistence" and whether it was okay of not to store information in the SESSION...

 

What do you think?

 

Thanks,

 

 

Debbie

 

 

[cssfreakie]

sessions are the way to go

 

Ones someone logged in(1 time you contact the database, and check credentials), you store that in a session . So adding Welcome Debbie, can be just as easy as a simple check.

Is debbie logged in if so echo hello debbie

[doubledee]

sessions are the way to go

 

Ones someone logged in(1 time you contact the database, and check credentials), you store that in a session . So adding Welcome Debbie, can be just as easy as a simple check.

Is debbie logged in if so echo hello debbie

 

So in my "log_in2.php", after I authenticate the user, I currently set...

$_SESSION['loggedIn'] = TRUE;
$_SESSION['memberFirstName'] = $memberFirstName;

 

So is it okay to just have something like this in my header file...

 

<?php
$firstName = (isset($_SESSION['memberFirstName']) ? $_SESSION['memberFirstName'] : '');

if ($_SESSION['loggedIn'] == TRUE){
	// Member Welcome.
	echo '<p id="welcome">
		<span class="orangeBold">Hello, ' . $firstName . '!!</span>
		</p>';
}else{
	// Visitor Welcome.
	echo '<p id="welcome">
	<span class="orangeBold">Hello,</span> <a href="#">Sign In</a> to access member-only features and content.
									  Not a Member?  <a href="#">Start Here</a>
	</p>';
}
?>

 

 

Debbie

 

 

[MasterACE14]

yep that's fine.

[gizmola]

Agree with freakie and masterace.

[doubledee]

Agree with freakie and masterace.

 

Thanks guys!!!

 

 

Debbie

 

P.S.  Feel free to stop by my thread http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=342379.new;topicseen#new which deals with the next steps in my Log-In module.