What method should I use to restrict access to sections of my website?

Fancier than password protected folders, members only section with login?

[Cienwen]

Hello,

I am looking for advice as to what method I should use to restrict access to sections of my website.

I want to have a “members only” section of the site. I know I could simply password protect a folder but I would like something a little more. Ideally, there would be a login box embedded in a page were users could login. There would also be a “forgot your password” function. Everyone would have there own login and password but they would need to be cleared by me before they were given the id and password.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I will hear ideas about anything! Any coding type or third party application, etc.

Thank you in advance.

Cienwen

[bill]

Why not use one of the community portal CMS systems to power your site?

[Beagle]

What Bill said - even if you don't want to use it for your entire site. I have a forum grafted onto ye olde static content site. The static content area of the site's been there for ages and I have no intention of redoing it, but on the part of the site that uses the forum program I can do everything you want and more - built into the program and controlled through the admin panel. And a good CMS will be at least as flexible as a forum program.

[Cienwen]

I would be interested in just about anything. Can you tell me a particular CMS that you think would be beneficial and its pros and cons?

I am looking to add an "employees only" section to an already existing site. So, I don't need a bunch of fancy features. I really need restricted access and username and password management.

Any suggestions?

All your help is appreciated!

[bill]

Head over to OpenSourceCMS.com and try them out for yourself. You can see which ones might meet your criteria, if any. If there's nothing there for you then at least you'll be able to qualify the features you want. Then you could head over to CMSMatrix.org and compare the CMS packages by feature.

[Cienwen]

That sounds great! Thanks for the resources Bill. I'm going to check that out in detail.