Hi all, I am a PHP programmer and I mainly working the cURL and MySQL fields, over the past years I have learned a lot from Net including various programming language both Server-side and Desktop Standalone. Unfortunately I had a big problem of SKIPPING things I didn't need @ that time. Recently I have been working on one of My Projects and someone suggested me to use sessions under user management,...I know a bit about sessions but neither the Syntax and nor How to work. Anyone out there wanna shoot me with the basics? I will be glad if you do

The session is a temporary, (more or less) isolated storage that is valid during the time the user browse on your site.
It's contained into the $_SESSION array.

And as always, the php.net manual is the first place to look for clues:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.session.php

Tripy gave you the basics ask follow up questions when ready.

Well, I always use google before asking and I had a look @ php.net but don't worry, I guess I should try it back and then ask questions. My first one is.

User comes to my site -> Logs in -> does some stuff -> goes to google in same window -> does some stuff -> comes back to my site.

Is he still logged in? How much gap it is before user gets logged out?

Thanks!

Is he still logged in?

If the time he passes aways is smaller than the configured garbage collector time out, yes

How much gap it is before user gets logged out?

It depends on the setting "session.gc_maxlifetime" in php.ini
http://www.php.net/manual/en/session.configuration.php

session.gc_maxlifetime specifies the number of seconds after which data will be seen as 'garbage' and cleaned up. Garbage collection occurs during session start.

Thanks for all your help!