Members Only Pages

Members only pages can give you a lot of power. Power to deliver services that are in fact reserved only for members. To have an adequate Members-only area, you need to have a login script.

Kenosha offers us a login script. If supported by your server, it is easy to get it going.  Using their StarterKit, you can set a site up so that people can only make it in if they are members of your chapter; they will do so using the Kenosha site login. It takes only a few moments to get it ready!  Click Here for their starter kit.

Remember - without the protection of a good login script, you can run the risk of messy legal battles.

Consider also that you should not have any HTML pages behind your logins. Those are searchable, and search engines can do endruns around them very easily. If you are going to have a member login, then all pages should be script pages that are equipped to check, upon load, that they have followed a successful login. This means that each and every page on the inside of a member-only site should check the value of a control variable. That way, if anybody attempts to bi-pass the member login, they will only get an error page.

On the NED Server, there is a file that tells Web-Bots NOT to harvest any information from this server. Most reputable sites honor that. There are bots that regularly and randomly go through web pages on servers, gleaning email addresses so that they can send spam to those addresses.  Try to create a script that avoids using email addresses - a web-based script is better than a mailto: tag for this.

What CAN you put behind an area that DOES check your Chapter or District membership?

  • In the case of the NED, you can register for NED Schools. When you do, your personal information is filled in FOR you. You can also get the District Directory in Adobe PDF format.
    • A similar activity on a chapter page would be to have on-line chapter expense vouchers that get emailed to the treasurer. Having logged in, when the member clicks on that option, he gets the Voucher Form with his Name already filled in.
  • In the case of your chapter, you can place Music Sheets there instead of Photocopying them (provided of course that you have paid for teh Mechanical licensing and you track the downloads). Therefore you can move your library to the web, where incoming members can find it easy to retrieve and print.
  • You can put MP3 files on the member-only page (again, provided that you have paid the mechanical licensing fee and track downloads). These can be the learning tracks that WOULD have been put onto cassettes.
  • You can put your Chapter Directory there in PDF format. For double protection against illegal access, buy Acrobat and when you create the PDF file, you will be able to password it.
  • You can have a button that allows you to send email to all your chapter members.
  • You can have a Chapter Board
  • You can provide Secretary's minutes and Committee Reports...