I StumbledUpon this article titled Making a Cool Login System with PHP, MySQL, and jQuery. It’s very slick, with a panel that slides down for the users to login or register. The article includes the complete code and a demo version. I like this approach—a separate login panel—because logging in is common to most sites but also something the user only does once per session at most, so it’s best not to take up screen space with a login form.