Use your database application and a registration page to create the table. For instructions, see the related topic link below.

The next step in building a login page is to add an HTML form to the page to let users log in. See the next topic for instructions.

Create a page (File > New > Blank Page), and lay out your login page using the Dreamweaver design tools.

Add an HTML form by placing the insertion point where you want the form to appear and choosing Form from the Insert menu.

An empty form is created on the page. You may have to enable Invisible Elements (View > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements) to see the form’s boundaries, which are represented by thin red lines.

Name the HTML form by clicking the <form> tag at the bottom of the Document window to select the form, opening the Property inspector (Window > Properties), and entering a name in the Form Name box.

You don’t have to specify an action or method attribute for the form to tell it where and how to send the record data when the user clicks the Submit button. The Log In User server behavior sets these attributes for you.

Add a user name and a password text field (Insert > Form > Text Field) to the form.

Add labels (either as text or images) beside each text field, and line up the text fields by placing them inside an HTML table and setting the table’s border attribute to 0.

Add a Submit button to the form (Insert > Form > Button).

You can change the label of the Submit button by selecting the button, opening the Property inspector (Window > Properties), and entering a new value in the Label box.

The next step in building a login page is to add the Log In User server behavior to verify that the entered user name and password are valid.

In the Server Behaviors panel (Window > Server Behaviors), click the Plus (+) button and select User Authentication > Log In User from the pop‑up menu.

Specify the form and the form objects that visitors use to enter their user name and password.

(ColdFusion) Enter your user name and password if applicable.

Specify the database table and columns that contain the user names and passwords of all the registered users.

The server behavior compares the user name and password a visitor enters on the login page against the values in these columns.

Specify a page to open if the login process succeeds.

The specified page is usually the site’s Welcome screen.

Specify a page to open if the login process fails.

The specified page usually alerts the user that the login process failed and lets the user try again.

If you want users forwarded to the login page after attempting to access a restricted page to return to that restricted page after logging in, select the Go To Previous URL option.

If a user tries to access your site by opening a restricted page without first logging in, the restricted page can forward the user to the login page. After the user logs in successfully, the login page redirects the user to the restricted page that forwarded them to the login page in the first place.

Specify whether to grant access to the page based on user name and password alone, or based on authorization level too, and click OK.

A server behavior is added to the login page that ensures the user name and password entered by a visitor are valid.