Setting up a password protected website

[daniellechonody]

I hope someone can help me with setting up a website that is password protected.

I run a pet sitting business and want a site where my pet sitters can visit to view upcoming jobs. Obviously this site will have personal client details that I don't want others to access.

I have no problem setting up the website - but have no idea how to password protect entry to the site.

Can someone give me some suggestions? Can this be done in the Frontpage design of the site?

Thanks
Danielle

[Lynn Terry]

I'm not familiar with the features in Frontpage enough to say whether it does or not... but most web hosting accounts come with that option. You can password protect any directory you like.

[Johnny]

[theuniek1]

First question, Danielle: how many users will there be?

This is important because it will help to determine the best method. For instance, Johnny's suggestion would probably be a good one if you were going to have about ten or fewer members because you could set up an account for each and it wouldn't be too difficult to manage from within your hosting account.

(Side note: If you don't have cPanel, you can still set it up with .htaccess, it would just require a couple extra steps.)

Now, if you plan to have a large list of members or sell access, then you should probably look into membership software. A well-known one is aMember. Haven't personally used it, but heard good things. There are also , but always use caution.

~ Teli

[rfresh]

Although I work in PHP on Linux, I will explain the way I handle that and you can see the general idea of the structure:

I create a global variable called login_status. For each web page that a user can click on my main nav menu, I check this var for a username. If the user has logged in then this var will have their username - if they have not logged in then it will be empty.

At the top of my main web page forms I have code that checks for a string length of 0 - if it's 0 then I redirect to a page that displays a message "You must be logged in to view this page".

[Johnny]

For the password protected folder way, you can always create one login id and password. (if this is fine with you)

All members will used the same id.
You tell them that the login information will be changed every month via email.

[robert adams]

if you have a bulletin board like this one.

you can create private forums on it, then only people that you give permission, can see that forum and post/reply to it.

with private forums and group permissions, you can do all sorts of things like that.

robert