[Brad]

You may want to wait for loo-portal to be released and rip the code out of it. The 1st one can be done quiet easyly, the second is gann require some php in the page and a few querys on mySQL.

Anyway, to answer your frist question, just stick this html (edit it to your needs this is only a guide) in anypage, make sure to change the url's in the code to match yours. This has no layout really, this will allow you to log in however, i asume you know the basics of html and how to do tables etc.

------ code snip ------
<form action="http://www.yoursiteurl.com/forum/member.php" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="login">
<input type="text" class="bginput" name="username" size="7">
<input type="password" class="bginput" name="password" size="7">
<input type="submit" class="bginput" value="Login!">
-------------- code snip ------------