For anyone that's ever worried that a simple login on their site would be too much hassle, mainly due to the security issues it introduces, then DevArticles might have a new piece you'll want to look into.

In one of their latest articles, Creating a Secure PHP Login Script, they focus on not only creating a login for your site, but also making it so that you can have "persistent logins" (for when people leave and come back, so they don't have to log in again). Of course, this method uses sessions in PHP to get the job done, so don't expect any "cookie howtos" or server-side tracking here.

There's lots of good ways to make a login system, this being one of the more standard ways, but once you start worrying about user logins and access to different areas of the site, then your site needs to be more than just secure, it needs to be bulletproof...