Question

I want to send emails to users when the forget their passwords that prompt them to reset their passwords. I know this is debatable and was looking for a few good options/suggestions/methods/articles to choose from.

I’m prompting users to press a ‘forgot password’ link with a simple script with the PHP portion doing this:

$Email = $_POST['email'];
$success = false;
$formError = false;

if(isset($_POST['sub_forgot_pw'])) {

    if(empty($_POST['email'])) {
        $formError = "true";
        $error = "Please enter your e-mail address.";
    }else{
        $to = $Email;
        $subject = "Password Help";
        $message = "To reset your password, please <a href='http://www.blahblahblah.org'>Click here</a><br /><br />Do LIFE,<br /> The Team";
        $from = "CysticLife <[e-mail]>";
        $headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\n";
        $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\n";
        $headers .= "From: $from";
        if(mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers));{
            $success = "true";
        }


    }

}

Answer 1

Here’s what I do:

I have reset_password table. When someone asks for a reset, they usually click a link on your site that says “forgot password” where they enter their email they registered with and your system sends a link.
Of course you begin with finding out if the user is registered at all. by selecting from users where email = $_POST[’email’].
If they exist, make a randomly generated token, like

$token = md5($_POST['email'].time());

But as Buh Buh expressed in the comment below, you may want to use something a little less obvious to generate your token. crypt() can accept a salt pattern if you like.

Insert the request (email and token) in the reset_password table, then you send them a link like

http://www.domain.com/resetpassword.php?token=<?php echo $token; ?>

Then in that file you take the $_GET[‘token’] and cross reference it with the reset_password table. If the token is valid, you present them with a form that asks for their new password.
Upon submit, select the user with the email address related to that token and update the user table.