In PHP, what are the best practices for handling user authentication and displaying dynamic content based on login status?

When handling user authentication in PHP, it is important to securely store user credentials, validate them upon login, and set session variables upon successful authentication. To display dynamic content based on the user's login status, you can check the session variables to determine if the user is logged in or not and show the appropriate content accordingly.

// Start the session
session_start();

// Check if the user is logged in
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id'])){
    // Display content for logged in users
    echo "Welcome, user!";
} else {
    // Display content for non-logged in users
    echo "Please log in to access this content.";
}