Simple login form with cookies

Hello everyone, I am trying to create a PHP login script using cookies but am having some troubles. Here is my setup index.php -> authenticate.php -> admin.php I want a login form on index.php that allows me to login with my username and password and then passes $_POST['username'] and $_POST['password'] to authenticate.php Then authenticate.php authenticates against a database of allowed users (Which I already have setup and it works fine), if a valid user has entered the correct information then admin.php is loaded... header("location:admin.php"); ...the admin.php code would look something like the following.. Code: [Select] <?php if (isset($_COOKIE['username'])) { echo "success!"; } else { echo "Failure"; } ?> So basically I think I need to create a cookie from index.php OR authenticate.php and then pass the information to admin.php. I set the cookie like this... setcookie("Admin", $username); Which file(index.php OR authenticate.php) do I create the cookie and how do I access the information in the cookie on admin.php?