 <ol> <li><p>You should be doing this checking in the controller - if you're not logged in, don't let the code drop into a branch where it'll use that view. You shouldn't be putting that kind of logic into a view.</p></li> <li><p>Call <code>$this-&gt;User-&gt;save($some_data)</code> where <code>$this-&gt;User</code> has the User Model loaded into it, and <code>$some_data</code> is the narrowed subset of data you want to insert into the users table.</p></li> </ol>