Member Only Area

[AlexDP]

Hi,

I would like to create a member only area on my site (to place chat-room and some other stuff). I currently have Toast Forums on my site and so already have a growing member database.

What I would like to do is use the same database and allow members to register on the forums and then be able to access other parts of the site.

The database used by Toast has a table called tstdb_Member and has the following fields:
ID
FName
LName
Username
Password (I think it said 128-bit encoding as passwords look like, for example, #§Å?1)
Email
and then some other data such as number of post, last post etc.

Is it possible to use this and create a pssword protected area? I have looked for scripts on the internet and haven't really found anything. Most want to create there own database or .htpassword file.

Am I asking too much?

[ronniethedodger]

Short answer, probably!

I would get in contact with the forum software people in their support forum and pose the question there if you haven't already. Toast Support Forums.

This is an ASP driven script and I am not too familular with it. Snitz being the only one that I was aware of for ASP.

It is also a very "young" forum software and you may be able to get some good responses from the writers of the software at their forum. They would know it better than anyone around here, unless there is someone who is actively involved with it.

Another thing you could do is to go over some of their existing add-ins that they have. Not too many of them, but what they do have you can go through and see how they "hook" into certain functions that are internal to the software. Pay close attention to their include files for interfacing with the database, user control panel functions, template functions, etc -- anything that you can think of using for your new pages. Sometimes the best answers you can find are with the software itself and its add-ins.

Good luck!

[M0rtym0use]

AlexDP,
You could of course write a simple login page which validates against a table in a db then store their login as a cookie and/or a session.

And then determine whether their session/cookie is valid at the top of each page ( include files would well here) to allow them to view the forum or not...


MM

[ronniethedodger]

You shouldn't have to write any of that. Should be able to hook right into the forums functions which should have cookie/session tracking .. the whole nine yards.

For instance, with phpBB all I have to do is include one file, two lines of code for the User/Session tracking, and two more includes if I want to use the header and footer files.

After that, the whole system is at my disposal and all of it's environment variables, constructs, the template engine ... everything. It is a simple matter of doing an if(user_logged_in) if I want to add a page for only regged users.

[swstyles]

Most of these forums have include files that check for permisions. Find this file and apply it to your pages. The user will have to login via the forum login. If you have the proper include or permissions checker on your private pages, the logged in user should have no problem viewing these pages.

If you have the whole forum downloaded to your computer, do a search for <!--include file="

This will turn up pages using include files. These files should have the info you are looking for unless the permission lookups are actually written on each page itself.

[buddhu]

If your database is of modest size I'd suggest checking out the e107 cms (www.e107.org) which integrates forums, members only pages and private messaging. There are chatroom plugins and loads of stuff. It's open source and *free*!

I think there are DB conversion scripts for some forums etc, but I'm not sure which ones.

If your database of existing members is too big, or if there is no conversion script for your forum DB then I apologise for wasting yr time.

[edthomas]

I've got a related question, and thought I'd try posting it here rather than starting a new topic. I'm building a content site, and just want to add a simple registration function for a membership area I'm creating --- doesn't have to tie into a billing platform or anything else, just a way for folks to sign up with an email address and password and then have access to a walled-garden portion of the site.

Are there any solid, easy-to-implement freeware scripts out there that can do this? It seems pretty simple, but I'm a newbie...

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by edthomas

Are there any solid, easy-to-implement freeware scripts out there that can do this? It seems pretty simple, but I'm a newbie...

Try these at HotScripts:

PHP User Authentication
PHP User Management
ASP User Authentication
ASP User Management

If you want some tutorials on those subjects, backtrack up their directory tree and you will find those as well.