User accounts

I'm new to this php thing and I would like to set up a web page were the users can login and edit their preferences and all that stuff. I have the basic login stuff worked out and I was passing the username and password as a hidden input in the form, but then the password can be seen with view source. I know that there's a better way to do this, so could someone point me to a good tutorial or example on how I could make it so that the user could login and logout and then I wouldn't need to be passing the password all around like this. Thanks, Dave