[chicaloca]

hi everyone

I finished a postgrad course in web design and multimedia a couple of months ago but now looking to create some sites of my own in order to gather a portfolio of sites to hopefully help me find work in a related field.

i'll probably be posting quite a few questions so i have a better idea of how to plan and design sites.

my first question would be how would i allow users to log into a members part of a site? would i have to use a cms or is there another way of doing so? thanks

[markhazlett9]

Well you could use a framework that is already in place, like a CMS, or you could just build one yourself using PHP/Ruby on rails and a database system. Hope this helps

Cheers

[chicaloca]

markhazlett9, on 1 Oct, 2009 - 11:10 AM, said:

Well you could use a framework that is already in place, like a CMS, or you could just build one yourself using PHP/Ruby on rails and a database system. Hope this helps

Cheers

thanks mark that does help! im learning about joomla at the moment and noticed that has a login feature. do you or would anyone know if you can embed html into joomla?

if i was going to buy hosting what would i need to look for if i wanted to create a site using joomla? really basic questions and it feels so overwhelming at the moment but the more i learn the better!

[markhazlett9]

Well I believe Joomla is an open source CMS, that means you get all the source code. That means you can modify it however you want to customize it to your needs. Not only can you embed HTML, but the entire framework is basically built on PHP, so if you know some PHP that could go a long way into customizing the functionality of Joomla. Hope this helps

Cheers

[chicaloca]

markhazlett9, on 1 Oct, 2009 - 01:56 PM, said:

Well I believe Joomla is an open source CMS, that means you get all the source code. That means you can modify it however you want to customize it to your needs. Not only can you embed HTML, but the entire framework is basically built on PHP, so if you know some PHP that could go a long way into customizing the functionality of Joomla. Hope this helps

Cheers

hi mark

yes it does help thanks, i dont know any php at the moment but im sure i'll have to learn at least some! would you know how i could have different joomla sites on the go at the one time without having them hosted? sorry if thats a bit vague

[W3bDev]

Joomla is laid out pretty funky and obscure codewise (at least in my opinion). It might be best to go with a customized portal. There are a lot of options, as people have said php/mysql is an option, but in my world, I prefur C#/ASP/SQL for getting things done. Its all really up to you, and how you want your code experience to be. I prefur compiled environments.

[SlyRhyno]

W3bDev, on 2 Oct, 2009 - 05:36 AM, said:

Joomla is laid out pretty funky and obscure codewise (at least in my opinion). It might be best to go with a customized portal. There are a lot of options, as people have said php/mysql is an option, but in my world, I prefur C#/ASP/SQL for getting things done. Its all really up to you, and how you want your code experience to be. I prefur compiled environments.

I had found a tutorial on PHP login. It works...sort of. Basically, it only protects that first page, not subdirectories or other files within the directory (in case someone knows the URL they can link directly to it) and even using the "Log Out" function it seems to still allow access unless cookies are explicitly deleted. So that wasn't so great.

Are there good examples that will completely protect the resources within a secured directory or domain? Another example I found uses .htaccess solely to secure a directory, but I'm skeptical of its ability and it seems to limit to a single authentication rather than multiple users. I am open to using PHP or ColdFusion, MS SQL or MySQL, but I just need some solid examples to get started. Also, I don't want to use Joomla or another CMS - I'm looking to build the site ground-up.

Thanks!