I am trying to develop a custom portal to integrate salesforce data along with some other hardware monitoring information in one portal.  I would like to use the salesforce self service portal user information for authentication, but am unsure if the API is capable of authenticating users this way.

 

Very new to salesforce.  Any PHP documentation or getting started information other than what is already posted is much appreciated.  For example, a very basic getting started guide using the enterprise wsdl and php would be helpful.