PHP and MySQL Web Development - P101: PHP and MySQL Web Development teaches the reader to develop dynamic, secure, commercial Web sites. Using the same accessible, popular teaching style of the first edition, this best-selling book has been updated to reflect the rapidly changing landscape of MySQL and PHP. | 24 Building User Authentication and Personalization In THIS PROJECT we ll GET USERS to register at our Web they ve done that we ll be able to keep track of what they re interested in and show them appropriate content. This is called user personalization. This particular project will enable users to build a set of bookmarks on the Web and suggest other links they might find interesting based on their past behavior. More generally user personalization can be used in almost any Web-based application to show users the content they want in the format in which they want it. In this project and the others to follow we ll start by looking at a set of requirements similar to those you might get from a client. We ll develop those requirements into a set of solution components build a design to connect those components together and then implement each of the components. In this project we will implement the following functionality Logging in and authenticating users Managing passwords Recording user preferences Personalizing content Recommending content based on existing knowledge about a user The Problem We want to build a prototype for an online bookmarking system to be called PHPBookmark similar but more limited in functionality to that available at Backflip http 474 Chapter 24 Building User Authentication and Personalization Our system should enable users to log in and store their personal bookmarks and to get recommendations for other sites that they might like to visit based on their personal preferences. These solution requirements fall into three main buckets. First we need to be able to identify individual users. We should also have some way of authenticating them. Second we need to be able to store bookmarks for an individual user. Users should be able to add and delete bookmarks. Third we need to be able to recommend to a user sites that might appeal to her based on what we know about her already. Solution Components Now that we know the .
