Premium content area

Question about subscription management software

[El_Tel]

Hi, I should like to set up an area on my website which contains content available only to subscribers. I have set up a passworded area, but what I am really looking for is software that will provide:

* subscription management
* prevent subscribers giving password away
* link to payment mechanism, eg PayPal
* contain (rudimentary?) newsletter management features

I have found software that does some of the above, but can't seem to find anything that does it all. Another thing I should mention is thaT I would rather have it installed, or for the program to have a really easy installation procedure, as I am not a "techie".

I know recommendations aren't allowed here, but could someone at least point me in the right direction, eg a review website or something?
Thanks very much in advance

Terry

[lorax]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld El_Tel,

I don't have any direct experience with these applications but it looks like FPS Password Content Manager or Profile Manager Premium might do what you want.

[El_Tel]

thnkas very much, I will look into these!

[Corey Bryant]

What type of content are you selling, text, media, audio?

-Corey

[El_Tel]

Probably pdf files, but in future may be avi and jpegs

[Corey Bryant]

Well the PDF files are very easily distributed once that are downloaded. You might check out CMS Merchant for a PHP solution. We primarily work with ASP actually on all our carts.

A few things to keep an eye out for, see if they do limit your downloads. Possibly maybe ZIP the download to a specific and protected URL. These were some of the requirements a client wanted. Or maybe a time-based download as well.

-Corey

[lorax]

But how do you prevent the sharing of passwords? My guess is that you could do it via some form of IP block and uname combination but that's not guaranteed to prevent a neighbor using the same ISP from sharing a uname/pwd. And it could prove problematic if the ISP has many IP blocks. How else?

[El_Tel]

Have been looking at cmsmerchant, it looks interesting; time-based downloads is an interesting idea; thanks, Corey; one prg I came across does use IP/p'word combination and flags up possible "illegal" usage

Thanks

[Corey Bryant]

Well the way we did it - we set it up to limit to two downloads - so even if they did try to share the passwords - they could only get one more download, no harm done.

-Corey