How long is a piece of string?

[smn2]

Hi,

Apologies for the daft subject (couldn't resist) - as
it happens I know the answer to that question.

What I don't know is how much effort/hassle it is:

1) to make your site a membership-only site - i.e.
only allowing access to parts of your site if people
log-in. I'm thinking of people forgetting their details,
etc. and having to help them (even with a password-
reminder button)

2) to add a forum to your site. I guess if it's unmoderated
then it's no problem?

I see that Loquax does both of these things on his excellent
site. (Don't mean to be a creep, honest!)

The perceived hassle has always put me off doing either of the
above, and income from my site has probably suffered. (Though
do you miss what you never had?)

Sorry about the (slightly) philosophical nature of this
post. Guess it must be time to have a beer soon.

Any advice on membership-sites and running forums
would be appreciated. I understand that, just like the length
of a piece of string, there can be no precise answers.

Cheers (hic!)

Steve

[ianm]

Can't comment on 2, but 1 isn't that difficult if you've got a fairly good knowledge of PHP or ASP and SQL. I'm in the process of setting up a membership site using PHP and MySQL.

The main things you need to worry about are dealing with sessions so that you can track the users within the site, storing the user details (password encryption etc), validating users (i'e email address verification). You also need to add in extra pages for users to update their accounts and any admin pages that you need. Finally, you need to protect your pages from being accessed by non-members.

I got the basics from a PHP book that I got ages ago and modified it from there to include things like email validation and pages that can be accessed by members and non-members.

Probably took me about 10 - 15 hours to get the basics in place and design a template for protecting the pages.

That said, there are ready coded user management systems available (freeware and shareware) - they just didn't do everything I wanted them to.

And to answer your other question as long as the distance between the two ends!

[lakrasia]

Hi, Don't know about 1, but I think it's pretty easy to set up a forum. I have one on my site (admittedly someone else set it up for me, but I'm sure it was easy). PHPBB is free and so is YABB.
I don't have that many visitors yet, as it's a new site, but it doesn't seem to require much maintenance - tell members to report abuse, then you don't have to read every single posting.

[loquax]

Thanks for the compliment....

We use phpBB and have taken the login from that to create a members only section (not sure if Kirsty did this this for us, or whether it was a MOD from the phpBB site).

Set up is fairly straightforward - should take a lot less than 10 to 15 hrs to sort out!

Having a forum is a mixed bag - downside is it can take up a lot of time (whether you're doing admin, dealing with problems or just getting involved with the discussions) which some may feel is better spent doing affiliate stuff to earn them a few ££.

Upside is it when it works then it's great to have a community feel about the place and it helps the "word of mouth" advertising.

For us, in terms of brand development it's worth the time, so there's something to be gained from it that perhaps isn't measured in short term ££.

The best thing we did was ask users to moderate - and it's down to them that we still have the forum and the whole thing now tends to be user led - which means myself and Kirsty can now get on and do our stuff to earn the ££.

Hassles - we've had the odd problem user, got so far as talking to AOL's legal department with one pain in the butt, but you can ban people and block IPs if need be.

Lost passwords/usernames come as standard - but we have an automated system now in place that users are pointed to before they get to email us!

Phpbb does have it's own mini-bugs, but they're not major - they do continually upgrade, offer a wide range of mods and improvements - and best of all it's free!

Does that help?

Jason

[smn2]

Does that help?

Yes, everyone's comments are helpful.

If I was going to go with the forum/membership-site thing then
it would be a strictly off-the-shelf solution for me. (I'm
just not into programming anymore!)

Lots of food for thought - cheers,
Steve