Need Some Direction

Hello, I am trying to build up a members only site, but I need some direction. So far I have written a page that will let a user register for access. That script emails me their info so I can validate it, sends them a "thankyou" email and then sends the data to a temporary MySQL database table. In the email that I get I created two links. One will send the user an acceptance email and put their info in a final database table. The other will send the user a Deny email and will delete their info from the temporary database table. I have also created a login script that will ask for a username and password and verify it with the database. If its all correct then it will redirect you to a restricted page. The direction I need is how do I go about restricting access to the members only pages? I have been reading up on sessions, which I think will be a cool addition to this site, but I still havent found much on restrictin access without a username and password. Currently my login and registration pages are located in the root of the domain. The all the members only pages are in a directory called /members/. Can anyone give me some direction on how I should go about all this. Thanks, Aaron