What system to use for auto login via URL : <p>I have limited skill with PHP and need to accomplish the discouraged/low security practice of passing credentials by URL-- which for my particular purpose is a perfectly good, relevant solution. </p>

<p>I have an area of my site with trivial/non-sensitive content that, nevertheless, I want to have hidden and control access to. However, I want them to <strong>not need to log in</strong> nor deal with credentials. So I'm thinking the group's credentials are passed by URL to auto login any user, allowing them to navigate around that area of the site. This content isn't sensitive and these aren't user accounts/pws/data, but group ones I set up.</p>

<p>I should be able to distribute links to any of the pages like 
<a href="http://example.com/home.php?&amp;username=GROUPNAME&amp;password=PW123" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/home.php?&amp;username=GROUPNAME&amp;password=PW123</a>
and allow them to nav all of the protected pages without getting logged out.</p>

<p><strong>More context</strong>: Offline a group would request an account for that area/those pages (a group account I create myself and later could delete/modify preventing access). I don't want people without a membership to have access to the content, and I'm not worried about the people sharing links outside of their group.</p>

<p>Should I go with something like User Frosting/User Cake? Or will it be overkill and create challenges with passing the credentials with GET/POST? Not sure if this method doesn't work if passwords get encrypted.</p>

<p>Or should a follow some low-security tutorial to set up a login system and another for using GET/POST to pass the credentials? </p>
