Well, if you are on a server that loses files then that would be bad[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. But then sessions would be the last of your problems[]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/].
Sessions work something like cookies, yes. All user profile info will still be stored in the database, sessions just track you while you visit the site.
How it works right now is you log in, and I set a cookie that has your username, encrypted password and language preference on your machine. Each time you request another page I grab this info from your cookie.
If you use sessions, in the php version this info is stored in a temporary file on the server. So instead of retreiving the info from your cookie, we grab it from the temp file.
There are 2 ways that sessions can work. One, you pass the session id (which points to the temporary file) to each script. Two, you set a cookie with the session id. So, we grab the session id from your cookie, and then grab the other info from the session file.
Hopefully that makes some sense. You will be able to choose either method (all cookies, sessions with no cookies, or sessions with cookies) for your users.
