# Website Membership?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 12, 2001, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929 "2001-11-12T16:26:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sdimbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sdimbert/32/20204_2.png) [@sdimbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sdimbert)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929/1 "2001-11-12T16:26:28Z")

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Note: This post has _nothing_ to do with the Reader’s recent decision to consider offering the SDMB on a subscription basis.

I’m planning to contract the construction of a website for a non-profit industry organization I belong to. We want certain parts of the site to require login; in other words, certain articles, news, etc will be available only to members.

So, the Proposals came back in and the creation of a database to do this is quite expensive. Does anyone know of a stand-alone product that can be purchased to manage this sort of thing?

For example, UBB handles membership, but only for the Forums admins create. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![sdimbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sdimbert/32/20204_2.png) [@sdimbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sdimbert)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929/2 "2001-11-13T00:17:00Z")

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I am worried that I was not clear in my OP and I want to make sure I’m being clear about one point: I want different users/members to be able to pick and use their own passwords. I don’t want to tell all 150 members of the organization the password is “whatever.” I want each of them to be able to use their own.

So, the first time they visit the site, they:  
[list=1]  
[li]Enter their full name which is checked against a back-end database of members in good standing.[/li][li]Enter their own password.[/li][li]Continue on to the protected content[/li][/list=1]

Can anyone help me?

[sub]  
Hey - by clarifying, I bumped this thread. Oops. ;)[/sub]

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**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2001, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929/3 "2001-11-13T01:43:44Z")

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My host includes a nifty program called Web Protect that can protect directories or individual files. The admin has to enter the users/pws by hand, but that isn’t too bad if you’ve only got 150 to deal with.

I can’t find any info on that particular script, but you should be able to dig up other solutions at:

[http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs\_and\_Scripts/Perl/Password\_Protection/](http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Password_Protection/)

and

[http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete\_Scripts/User\_Management/Password\_Protection/](http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/User_Management/Password_Protection/)

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**Author:** ![Waneman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/71e660/32.png) [@Waneman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waneman)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2001, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929/4 "2001-11-14T16:17:45Z")

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You might go to [hotscripts.com](http://hotscripts.com) and see if you can find anything there that will do wha you want.

You should find something both in cgi/perl or Php which would use MySQL as the database. By the way, both are free.

-Waneman

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**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2001, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/website-membership/92929/5 "2001-11-14T16:59:17Z")

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I think you can do what you want to do with .htaccess/.htpassword if your host supports it.

It’s free with a lot of web hosting packages.