Yeah, the authenticate function queries a bunch of stuff from the Users table automatically, but then you can add extra fields in there. It's really quite handy.
If you were doing alot of Group checking all over your site - you could find the function in ubbt.inc.php and add the U_Groups to the end of the database query in there. Then $user['U_Groups'] would work everywhere without having to add it to authenticate on every page.
Glad I could help you - you've been quite helpful to me lately. That tip on installing the GD library was a timesaver.
