I have no problem what so ever with your desire. In fact, I encourage you to do this.

"So, how?"

I thought you'd never ask. :)

First, learn HTML forms. You will need a page that contains two text boxes and a submit button. The action will point to a Perl script that will check for the presence of values in the two text boxes. If the values are good, and match with some user in a flat file, DB file, or a database, then you can redirect them to the s.pl file thingy.

You mention sessions - there are generaly 3 ways to keep state in a web application:

1. hidden fields
2. passing values in the query string
3. Apache::Session

The first two are okay, but the third, while carrying a steep learning curve is da bomb.

Good luck, and please feel free to post code :)

jeffa