How to authnticate and use contents from ${HOME}

Hello, My name ich Chantale, I am 15years old and in a german Lycee. I like to study Informatic in two years and now try to code my first applications. I am new to php and like to code my own Intranet Web-Interface which should run on my FileServer at home. I have installed "libapache2-mod-suphp" and "php5-auth-pam", but it seems to be not the thing I need. What I need is, that a ${USER} can login and work on her/his ${HOME}. And NO, the /~${USER} thing is definitively not what I want. How can I archive this? Thank you Chantale #adBox3 {display:none;}