Did you ever get your sessions working? I noticed you had both user and files for session storage mgmt. It should really be just one or the other, not both.
Files is the easiest way to go -- PHP handles everything for you -- reading, writing, deleting, etc... One caveat -- the session save dir MUST exist, and have permissions set that your webserver user (or whatever user PHP runs as) can read and write in that directory.
User is a little more difficult, but gives you the flexibility to store session data however you want. Most people use custom session handler functions to store session data in a database.
In the end, it's up to you. I suggest starting out with "files" and then moving to "user" if you want the added flexibility.
Take care,
Nik
http://www.bigaction.org/