[thelist] creating client section, password protected

[Christy Collins]

My experience does not extend far beyond html and css.

I am doing a trade with a graphic designer that I do some work with.  
She has a side business making invitations and wants a website.  She 
wants to have a password protected section where her clients can log in 
and see her progress on their invitations.

The way to do that within the realm of my experience would be to create 
a protected directory for each client, then send an e-mail to each 
client that would contain the url to their directory and their username 
and password.

The snazzy way would be to have a login on her homepage where the user 
enters in their username and password and then is taken to their 
corresponding progress page.

So what technologies should I be looking at for the snazzy way?  Is 
there a way to do it without getting involved with databases, which I 
know very little about?  Any articles or tutorials about this sort of 
thing would be appreciated.

I typically use a host with Apache on a Unix server that includes PHP 
and MySQL.

thanks
-Christy