Creating a paying membership site

[dralfalfa]

I don't know if this is the right area to be posting about this, but I think I am close.

Anyway, What I want to do is create a website in which I would charge people a small monthly fee to access the site...or parts of the site. My question is...how do I go about doing this? Is it super difficult?

Is there a place/book/etc that would show me how to create a site that would perform this function? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[J.D.]

You need to build a database of subscribers, assign them all some credentials and then ask everybody who visits protected portions of your site to authenticate themselves (at least the first time if you want use cookies). Every time people come in and identify themselves (either by entering credentials or providing a correct cookie), you check current date against their subscription and either let them in or give them the subscription page.

J.D.

[sji2671]

Head over to hotscripts.com and search the asp section for membership and you should find some scripts cheap/free that may suit your needs if you dont want it custom coded.

[Help Desk]

I believe this is built into DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke). Not sure if that is what you are looking for, but check it out.

[gary99]

DotNetNuke is a great package. Great flexibility and extensibility. Pretty good support from the community as well, with plenty of add-on modules available. One thing I noticed was that it created some pretty hideously complicated HTML. The nav tree is hidden in a big xml string, which I think must be parsed in javascript or something. Anyhow search spiders couldn't find any links on my site. I just tore the whole thing down and replaced it with a simpler site. Just my $0.02.

[Help Desk]

DotNetNuke is a great package. Great flexibility and extensibility. Pretty good support from the community as well, with plenty of add-on modules available. One thing I noticed was that it created some pretty hideously complicated HTML. The nav tree is hidden in a big xml string, which I think must be parsed in javascript or something. Anyhow search spiders couldn't find any links on my site. I just tore the whole thing down and replaced it with a simpler site. Just my $0.02.
Mind sharing you site. I am a DotNetNuke advocate but one should always stay flexible.

[gary99]

Actually the DNN site is gone now. The site is:

http://workfromhomespot.com

I just decided to do my own hand coded ASP.NET pages for now. I was reading up on SEO stuff, and when I saw what DNN did with my links I decided to rip it out. Maybe I gave up too fast, but I do sort of like having complete control over my HTML (without having to delve into the depths of DNN modules).

Cheers,
Gary

[gary99]

That's pretty interesting what you've done with your thinkbling tools page:

http://www.thinkbling.com/tools.php

Do you have any idea if making your content look just like to google ads improves your click-through rating? It tool me a while to figure out that I wasn't just staring at a page full of ads. Interesting idea...

-Gary

[stueym]

A site like this isnt too taxing you need a simple user registration and login system that uses session variables. You can use asp session variables to store the users ID and name email etc. This comes in handy and you can builf some really nice personalised features.