Heyo. This is going to be the first of 4 tutorials on making a jQuery powered AJAX login system with a PHP backend. The series of tutorials will go like so.

1. Plan, code the form (This tutorial)
2. Code the PHP backend, make it work
3. Code the AJAX, implement it.
4. Tidy it up, make it look snazzy

Ok then. So we will have a forum with 2 inputs; username and password. The user will enter the details and we’ll use PHP to authenticate them. If its true, we can set a cookie or echo some text. We will then implement jQuery’s AJAX and make the whole thing seemless. Some nice little fades will be added at the end.

So, the form. Its a plain and simple HTML form. Nothing special about it.

Username:

Password:

Thats all for now. Next lesson we will code the PHP and “make it work“.