Now that the actual site for the PHP assignment is pretty much finish, I can think of ways to adapt the code for the project.
In the meantime though, I want to start work on the account system, as that did not come up properly during the assignment.
PHP offers a function to automatically salt and hash passwords via password_hash(). This can be used to convert passwords into a secure form, and can be stored in the database and be retrieved later for logging in using password_verify().
One thing I am less certain on is the usage of sessions on PHP. These are more ideal than just using cookies for logging in, but I have yet to learn how they work. Nevertheless, I have to learn how to use them if I want the login system to work properly.
Once the accounts are setup, I can work on sorting user permissions and other systems, like article ownership. One subject I've seen come up a lot while investigating MySQL databases is the concept of database relationships, such as one-to-many and many-to-many. Essentially, I can store a user ID for each user, and use a seperate database with each permission in it, assigned to user IDs. These can then be checked when needed. A similar concept can be used for article ownership, storing the user ID within the same database row as the article itself.
