landing page

[pshermeta]

I cannot seem to find anything relating to this topic in my searches, so I will post here.

What I would like is a forum that is entirely behind the scenes. I know you can customize whether guests may view content, but I want to take it a step further.

I would like a landing page at domain.com which will have, among other things, a login script. Using the username and password to login to the forums will take you to the forum index. I would like to have the one username/pass combination and not require a separate login at the forum index.

That said, it would require having a site that denies access to domain.com/forum to the same casual users.

I hope that makes sense.

Is this something that sounds feasible? Would it just require some custom programming or an excess of personal free time to learn it on my own?

Thank you kindly for your time in this matter.