Ask Felgall

More of a toolkit than a complete solution, this script provides the basic functionality to add the requirement that people have an account and login before being able to access web pages. The basic login, logout, lost password, change password, and join pages are all supplied and can be easily customised to match your site. Also supplied is a block of code to add to the top of all the pages that you want to have password protected. The script includes a wide range of security features to help prevent people gaining unauthorised access to your pages. The main thing that this script provides is that it saves you having to work out how to secure your join and login forms to prevent people breaking in.

Based on suggestions from a couple of the people who have purchased this script along with the experience I have gained by using this myself to build a couple of membership sites, I am currently developing a more advanced version of this script that will provide more of the functionality required to build a complete membership site.

Password Protected Area

Regardless of which operating system you are using these days you should have at least two logins set up on i - one with administrator access and one without. You then use the login without administrator access for everyday use and only use the administrator account when you really need to do something that needs that access. By doing this you ensure that even if something gets past all the other security you have in place nothing that requires administrator access will be able to be run without your knowledge (and most installs require that access so viruses etc will not be able to install things on your system).

One problem is that while you will give your everyday account a your own username, the administrator account gets a default username when it is first created. This means that someone only has to guess the password to break into it instead of having to guess both the username and password. It is therefore not only the account people would prefer to break into but is also the one that will be easier to break into - unless you change the username to something different from the default.

Changing the System Administrator Logonid