I bookmarked this page. Soon as I am done reading up on C++ this will be the first thing on my list.

I do not know about the costs but for your first question.
http://www.eccouncil.org/certification/exam_information/take_exam.aspx

Short. If you do not attend classes you will need to fill in the following form to be allowed to take your exam.
http://www.eccouncil.org/home/exam_eligibility_form.aspx
Aside form that.
But I suggest you read the link I provided. I might have missed one or two things.

H4TT1fn4TT.

Some extra information regarding your first question.

A database allows for the storing of almost any type of information (even files, however this is not a good practice).

PHP is a programming language meant for web development mainly and allows you to write scripts that perform certain tasks. One of these could be to connect to a database,collect the information in it and display it. Or to compare a certain password (often hashed, salted) with the one stored in the database. PHP can then be used for example to write an 'if' statement to see if the password was correct and allowing certain privileges if so.

However, if you are just building a small website for yourself and you are inexperienced (and not to forget security is not that important). It would be best to just look into PHP only and start experimenting in the beginning. Even if you would use PHP to communicate with a database it would give you no advantages over only using PHP if your code is poorly (insecure) written.

Some good links with tutorials on PHP (my favorite is the second one).
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
http://www.tizag.com/phpT/

Just some additional information. PHP does not allow you to create those nice interfaces you see everywhere. For that you would need to learn some other languages like HTML and CSS,

I could not find any information about the student course on the official website. What exactly are the subjects discusses.

All I found there was information about the pro course. That lead me to an other question. Amongst the "course at a glance" I found 'Qualifies you for 40 CPE credits '. What are CPE credits?

You are talking about CEH as if it is the same word as penetration testing. Let's clarify that first. CEH is  course that teaches you penetration testing and is offered by the EC council. Here is a link to it:
http://www.eccouncil.org/certification/certified_ethical_hacker.aspx

To be able to take the exam you will need to get authorized to do so:
http://www.eccouncil.org/certification/exam_information/take_exam.aspx

I have no idea what type of background you would need to take the course. However from what I understand it is mostly aimed at using tools. So I would guess that a basic knowledge of networking and maybe programming would do.

I hope a CEH certified member will be able to give you some more details.

I do not know what type of access you need to the a wireless router to change the settings these day's however if it only requires the password you could look into aircrack-ng.

http://www.aircrack-ng.org/

Other options that automate the entire process are wifite and grimwepa. However the second one is currently no longer supported by the developer. Both where coded for the Backtrack operating system but should run on all versions of Linux.

http://code.google.com/p/wifite/
http://code.google.com/p/grimwepa/

Just one note: as far as I am aware you need to be directly connected to a wireless router to be able to change any settings (at least from what I remember, but I have not used them in over 2 years now).

Beside that. If you are trying to see how secure your wireless connection is there are more easy methods. To penetrate a WPA2 protected network you will need to run dictionary files against the collected information. Using a strong password that combines letters, symbols and numbers (if I am right WPA2 is also case sensitive so that would effect it as well) and that uses the maximum length allowed for passwords using WPA2. Would result in that a hacker would need several years and several computers to find a match (if he ever will).

Additional information on how you need to be connected to the router in able to change the settings you might find in the user guide.
www.tplink.com.tw/downloads/1263811969.pdf

H4TT1fn4TT.

Is it mentioned anywhere how this review process works and what would you conciser a complete article (1 or 2 A4)?

Thanks for the welcome. I am currently already writing three papers. One on the dangers of a badly configured robots.txt files, one about phishing and and other one about website spidering use wildcards.

I learned English from the TV when I was a kid. To bad it does not teach you any spelling and grammar.

I could not help noticing that most people on here do not write articles them selves but just post links to content of others. Did I overlooked a section maybe?

And one more question I hope some one could answer if I write an article on a certain subject would I put that in the tutorials forum or in the forum that corresponds to the subject and content of the article?

I just wanted to make a short introduction. I had no idea where to post this and this seemed to me to be the most suitable part of the forum for it.

I'm a 26 year old guy who has loved computers from when I was a kid. However I never really got to learn about how it all works. A few months ago I started reading up on everything and the fever got to me. Currently I am trying to read as much as I can get my hands on. While in the mean time studying C++ from online tutorials.

My dream (but I guess many share it with me) is to some day get some type of certification to become an official penetration tester (and leave the dirty heavy job that I got now to someone else).

I read about the contests you run here and I think they are a great thing (could really be life changing for some people). I try to hope to contribute along the way of learning myself by posting some tutorials. I guess some will be pretty basic to the more advanced members of this forum. But if they are please tell me then what I could look into more that is related to the subject I wrote about.

And beside that all. I do my best watching my spelling and grammar however English is not my native language and even with Firefox's build in dictionary I might write something wrong from time to time, forgive me for that...

Hope to discuss network/computer security and penetration testing with all of you.

H4TT1fn4TT.