Membership?

12 posts by 3 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: March 20, 2008   (RSS)

By dougdrury - February 15, 2008

I have a client who wants to be able to add usernames/passwords and have a certain section of the website member only.

I have done this with straight PHP, MySQL and PHP Sessions before. Are there any tools already in CMS Builder for this, or should I just build a 'Members' menu with username and password fields and then query that table upon a login event. I could test to see if any records came up (based on the where clause) and then allow them access or not. It is a bit of a kludge, but it would save me having to write a new UI for member administration and a separate database connection class.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Re: [dougdrury] Membership?

By Dave - February 15, 2008

If you're comfortable with the PHP/MySQL login part of it then yes, using CMS Builder is a fast way to create the administration UI.

This is actually exactly what we did for managing CMS Builder user accounts. There's a hidden "section editor" called "accounts" and then some custom code then does the login username/password checks. You can see that hidden accounts section by pasting this after the admin.php:

admin.php?menu=database&action=editTable&tableName=accounts

Hope that helps, let me know if you need anything else.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Membership?

By soj - March 12, 2008

Hi Dave, is there any chance you could provide the code and instructions to add this feature? I need this for a client too, but am not as comfortable with creating apps in php/mysql - I don't mind finding and modifying the code myself, so long as I have the code to insert/replace.

Alternately (maybe), is there a way to grant a user read only rights to a section?

TIA, soj

Re: [soj] Membership?

By Dave - March 12, 2008

So what feature are you looking for? That you can password protect certain php pages on your website so visitors can't view them unless they login with a username and password that is stored in the program?

And read only access - can you tell me more about how that would be used? Why wouldn't the user just read the content on the website? We thought about adding that but didn't have a good enough use case for it.

Have you setup your viewers already so the content is display the way you want and being loaded from CMS Builder? (That would be the first step).

Thanks, let me know! :)
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Membership?

By soj - March 12, 2008 - edited: March 12, 2008

Hi Dave, thanks for your response.

My client wishes to restrict access to a download page, and track who is accessing the page. The product is programming content for radio. They want to keep track of who is logging in and listening each day. It will help them sell any advertisements.

I'm trying to figure out a good way to do that.

I'm still trying to determine if your product will fit all their needs. This would be my first time using it.

Thanks, Soj

Re: [soj] Membership?

By Dave - March 12, 2008

Hi Soj,

I'm going to say that CMS Builder probably isn't the right fit for that project. It could manage the content but doesn't have the membership features and anything I could create for you would be pretty basic.

I think what you need is either a custom solution or some kind of download management script. Have a look at these directories, they may have something more inline with what you need:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/File_Manipulation/Download_Systems/index.html

http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/File_Management/File_Downloading/

Hope that helps! :)
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Membership?

By soj - March 20, 2008

Hi Dave, thanks so much for your input. I'm considering using a second party script. We can have a link from the home page to a page containing the downloads. The downloads page would need to be protected. Will it be possible to edit such a page with the system?

TIA!

soj

Re: [soj] Membership?

By Dave - March 20, 2008

Maybe, I'm not really sure. I think you'd have to experiment with it a bit. It would depend on how the download system worked.

Are you looking to manage part with CMS Builder and part with the download system?
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Membership?

By soj - March 20, 2008

I thinking of not so much a download system as an authentication system to a protected page at this point.

Thanks! soj