In need of cgi script...

[Jak]

I need a script that basically acts in the same way as an AVS authentication form.

The login prompt should not be the pop-up kind, but should reside on an html page as a form. A person enters their username and password to gain access, and the form calls a script RESIDING ON A DIFFERENT, MOTHER SERVER to authenticate the user. If the authentication passes, the person is let into a protected members area. The key here is the part in all caps.

Ideally I'd like for someone who wants to protect their site with the script to only have to add the right html form code to their page and that would be that. I don't want them to have to mess with htaccess files, etc. on their end. I'd also like to be able to easily add and delete users to\from the system, set time periods for user\password expirations, and if the whole thing uses mySQL as a back-end even better, although flat text would be OK for now until I need more power.

I've found plenty of scripts that would let me do this easily if the protected pages all resided on my server, but again the key to what I want is that the login form can be on ANY server and call the cgi script from my mother server to authenticate the user. Like I say, it's pretty much the same thing an AVS script does but without all the overhead like a search engine, etc.

Anyone got any ideas on where to find something like this? Budget must be on the lower end too because this isn't a huge project but rather something I'm just messing around with for now.

Thanks,
Jak

[Azathoth]

I think you'll find a lot of em work on cookies which is why they work on the same site but not cross site. The solution may be a little more detailed than you are expecting.

[Darin]

So you want a simple user/pass authentication that redirects to a hidden url the site provides as a MEMBER area thats not protected?

[Jak]

The member area should be protected regardless, but the authentication should come from the mother server's script.

I guess yeah that would mean that they would have to protect it with .htaccess also (which I noted above that I didn't want but actually it would have to be). The main thing though is that access to their protected area would only be available by authenticating from the mother server script.

Jak