Requiring visitors to register

[Buzliteyear]

I tried searching on this topic, but "Register.com" keeps coming up.

I would like to create a new site with a main page open to all, but they would have to register with username and password (with some of their basic info) before being able to view the rest of the site.

How would I do this?

Thanks.

[anallawalla]

Depends on your server's OS. There are numerous scripts out there for Linux/Unix/Apache servers and probably a few for Windows.

You will lose a few readers - newspaper sites are a good example where this risk was acceptable after requiring registration.

[mincklerstraat]

If you're not very well-known, you'll probably lose out on a lot of potential readers - those pages won't be trawled by SE's, and the number of pages you have is likely to be one of the biggest factors in getting visitors from SE's. You can also use one of the well-known scripts out there and allow all users access to everything, and then only later require users to register.

[MatthewHSE]

Why do you need/want people to have to register? Would it be enough to have optional registration with extra benefits?

If I visited a site that wouldn't let me get beyond the front page without registering, I would leave. I'd want to see at least some of what the site had to offer before I provided any personal information.

[kodaks]

You may want to dig around hotscipts for "user management" scripts.