suggestions for quick to implement user system?

corporateboy

I have a website that I want to stop google indexing and prevent public access to.

It has a large database attached and a BIG photo database.

I want to lock it down so only registered users can access the site beyond a welcome page.

It is all handcoded by yours truly. I would like to figure out how to roll out a membership system without chopping up everything else too much.

Any suggestions on how this could be done (in broad terms or reccomendations of any easy plug in code would be great).

I've changed the meta tags to ward off google and I'm currently thinking ill just pop a mysql table in with login and cookie to remember people, test on every page load for a valid user, if not valid then display an error - but the coding will take a while and there might be a way around it.

All suggestions welcome.

thanks,

Rodney_H_

corporateboy wrote:
...All suggestions welcome.

Well, cos I am always ready to share my two cents, I suggest you check out this article: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/great-client-login-system

It helps you to plan your site for logging in your clients. Then, you could check out all the great tutorials available and learn to code this yourself using PHP (sessions, cookies, header-redirects, etc...) and mySQL database (store users info, search to see if login info matches, allow users to update email info, etc...)

I was able to do this for my Brother-in-laws site myself in a short while after taking online tutorials, doing my own tests/examples, and posting questions here. THis is a great community of people who will help you if you show a little initiative and try to write the code yourself. If you get stuck, there will be a lot of support and guidance from real gurus here. (I am still a newbie...)

Some great tutorials are available here

And Codewalkers has a good tutorial on a basic authorization system here (the concepts are good, but I recommend reading a few different articles from a few different sites to get a better perspective and ideas how to write the most secure code. People here will also help you develop good strategies for secure site)

Good luck. Let me know if this is helpful, or if you would like any more info on tutorials....

corporateboy

thanks mate, i'm a decent enough coder - and i have been coding for a few years - but I hate to reinvent the wheel if someone else has a spare wheel lying around =)

appreciate the links - also im after thoughts on how the theoretical deployment of a user-system on a pre-existing site - I'm don't want to code it all up then discover it's got a glaring security hole or incompatibility I've overlooked.

Rodney_H_

corporateboy wrote:
thanks mate, i'm a decent enough coder - and i have been coding for a few years...

Ah... cool. I hope some of the gurus will chime in. I always learn something when they add their thoughts! 😃

tenbellys

if had a pre existing site and wanted to put a membership system on id do it 2ways

.htacces .htpasswd
simple and works but you loose alot of features such as putting usernames on pages
mysql/php based usersystem
build all the login scripts, profile pages etc etc and do it session based so a session will let a user in if the session is equal to what ever you need it to go

then build a small script that will check if the session is active and if its not redirect users to your login page, this file will only be about 10-20 lines max and then you include it on all your existing files and if all goes to plan you would have integrated the login system with you existing site without having to hash your pages to peices to much.

of course you would need to edit some pages to add your register, login, profile links etc etc.