How to set up website for user accounts/passwords/profiles?

Question

How do I set up my website to allow user accounts with user ID and passwords? And, how do I set it up to allow users to have a profile that are searchable with various criteria, like the ones on a dating site (where you can search a person by their hobbies, location, etc)? I'd like to do this as free or inexpensive as possible... but I am looking for a somewhat simple way since I don't have a lot of webmaster experience. Anything helps! Thanks!

Answer 1

your only way is using database. store users data (username, password, age,...) in a table. you can search trough table's fields!
there is a lot of open source projects, go to http://www.planet-source-code.com