Building Menus based on User Rights

I would like for my pages to generate HTML code based on a users rights. For example I have a table called user and it looks like this userid password admin user -------------------------------------- me mypass Y you yourpass Y When a person logs in they are authenticated against this table. Once they are logged in I would like to build a page with a few links. If the person has a Y in the admin, I would like to offer an additional link on the page for some admin functions. My question is this, when a person logs in I know the user name and password is stored in the $_POST global. How long does that stay available. Can I recall the userid and password, query the database and then generate a page based on those results? Would I be better off using the session information or setting cookies? I'm at the crossroads and not sure which trail to start going down. Ray -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Is the Internet down?