How to build a membership website

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euanandrews

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Topic # 16279 2-Oct-2007 15:42

I want to build a membership website including...
Profiles
Login/passwords
Profile searches

Is there a WYSIWYG program I can use that will do all this....what is the best/most ideal?

Freitasm, maybe you can best answer this one for me?

freitasm

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Reply # 89105 2-Oct-2007 16:44

It's a big thing and depends on how much you want to spend... There are free software, open source, closed source, free DB, Linux or Windows Servers, etc.

Check Joomla, PhpBB, DotNetNuke, CommunityServer, etc, etc...

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Lipex666

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Reply # 89106 2-Oct-2007 16:47

It also depends how much you want to spend. Its the hosting whether you have a static html pages or a SQL database etc. US sites doing hosting cheap or look around for hosting sites in NZ.

Lots of free CMS like Joomla etc and you can knock up free html pages in free html editors in under 5 minutes for something basic.

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kinsten

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Reply # 89109 2-Oct-2007 16:58

If you are looking for hosting, go for something that has CPANEL which is on most linux based hosting servers. This control panel allows for easy installation. I beleive Kiwihost have hosting from $4 per week or something rediculous which uses cpanel.

I resell cpanel accounts also, here is a list of programs they offer: (would link them to their sites but that would take too much time)

Blogs
     b2evolution
     Nucleus
     pMachine Free
     WordPress

Content Management
     Drupal
     Geeklog
     Joomla
     Mambo Open Source
     PHP-Nuke
     phpWCMS
     phpWebSite
     Post-Nuke
     Siteframe
     TYPO3
     Xoops

Customer Relationship
     Crafty Syntax Live Help
     Help Center Live
     osTicket
     PerlDesk
     PHP Support Tickets
     Support Logic Helpdesk
     Support Services Manager

Discussion Boards
     phpBB2
     SMF

E-Commerce
     CubeCart
     OS Commerce
     Zen Cart

F.A.Q.
     FAQMasterFlex

Guestbooks
     ViPER Guestbook

Hosting Billing
     AccountLab Plus
     phpCOIN

Image Galleries
     4Images Gallery
     Coppermine Photo Gallery
     Gallery

Mailing Lists
     PHPlist

Polls and Surveys
     Advanced Poll
     phpESP
     PHPSurveyor

Project Management
     dotProject
     PHProjekt

Site Builders
     Soholaunch Pro Edition
     Templates Express

Wiki
     TikiWiki
     PhpWiki

Other Scripts
     Dew-NewPHPLinks
     Moodle
     Noahs Classifieds
     Open-Realty
     phpAdsNew
     PHPauction
     phpFormGenerator
     WebCalendar

Extras
   Language
   Side menu appearance
   Email notifications
   Installations overview

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euanandrews

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Reply # 89119 2-Oct-2007 17:57

I'm not interested in the hosting scenarios just yet...thats stage 2

For now I'm just interested in building the site, getting the coding right, finding out what I need to know to build a membership site
A site where people sign up, get a login/password to their profile, their profiles can be personalized to a certain degree, and they can search for other people and others can search for them according to various user inputted specifics...

Similar to a dating site, but not quite.

kinsten

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Reply # 89121 2-Oct-2007 18:11

Similar to a dating site, but not quite.

Ooo, I woulda said more like MySpace or Bebo. Yea I too wanted to create a website similar in relation music, where bands and artists could present their theme and music. But MySpace created this option, and then anyone could link to each other using the Friends network. Very tight.

Check out some of the content management things from Cpanel list of installable applications to get source code. Most are open source. They also have plenty of premade themes you can work from

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ahmedmasry

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Reply # 91232 16-Oct-2007 13:58

Hi Everyone,

About building a membership site,you need to concern about 3 things:

1-Content management:i.e. managing the content inside your site private area,and this shall be handled great using Wordpress free platform.

2-management of the site: and this shall be done using a specific software,many software programs are available out there,some are high priced solutions (up to $3000 )some are moderate in cost.
The best software available according to the experts recommendations is amemeber,you can find it at amember.com,it's the most commonly used membership sites software,and handle all the aspects you're asking about(password management,member's management..etc)
It's for $140/license, which is reasonable in comparison t other solutions,
Just pay attention that a single license is used with a single domain and website,which means every time you need to build a website you need to purchase a new license,unfortunately there's nothing available to turn this around,but in general it's ahighly recommended software.

3-Payment processing:if you are going to charge your member's you need a proccessor for collecting the payment,this will be done fine using PayPal,doesn't require upfront fees and a reasonable percentage is deducted from the processed money.

To my knowledge,these are the most important aspects regarding a membership site.
But I think you have to worry about doamin and hosting as well,this is not a later factor,you can't do anything without a hosting account where you'll install the required software and scripts.

I wish this helps out.
Ahmed

KevDaly

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Reply # 91274 16-Oct-2007 18:35

I can't comment on what's available for Linux etc., but if you're working on a Windows platform (or quite possibly Mono under Linux) there's built-in support in ASP.NET 2.0 for everything you want to do except the searching.

With the various membership and login-related controls and their associated bits and pieces you can actually do a surprising amount without writing any code (I found that out the first time I used these controls: I was actually quite taken aback at how much just worked without additional coding) - I'd suggest having a read here to get an idea of what I mean.

Depending on what data you collect and what you want to be searchable, writing some basic search functionality shouldn't be too hard if you have some familiarity with SQL.

If you need something completely out-of-the-box you're better off of course going with one of the CMS solutions. You'll undoubtedly get more than you need to start with, but that won't necessarily be a bad thing in the long run.