Authenticating users based on S/MIME certificate

Hi. I am an administrator of a user account at an Apache web server. 
Currently the server is running Apache 1.3.37. My hosting provider plans 
on switching to new hardware with possibly new software. So I don't know 
if my web server will be run on Apache 1.3.37 or Apache 2.0.

My goal is to let visitors of my web site authenticate themselves to my 
web server using some certificate, possibly S/MIME certificates.

Now, my current S/MIME certificate for personal e-mail is approved for 
the following purposes:
Email Signer Certificate
Email Recipient Certificate

Is it possible to have such a certificate authenticate its user towards 
an SSL web server? In any case I want to have a limited crowd of users 
seeing a subdirectory of pages without bothering the user with a user 
name/password dialog. Just their personal certificate lets them see 
pages in a certain subdirectory.

As I understand the documentation for PHP, there is no means whereby PHP 
can read and interpret an SSL client certificate. Is that correct?

Gunnar
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