How to create a members' area and define access to it

Compatibility:

WebSite X5 Evo and Pro

You often come across websites where you don't have free access to all the sections: to be able to view the contents in certain parts of the website you need to register and obtain access credentials to enter these restricted areas. A classic example is a company site, where access to the Members' Area is reserved for salespeople and partners to view documents and price lists, or portals that require registration to access contents that can be downloaded.

WebSite X5 offers the possibility to create a members' area in your website with a number of Locked pages, and access to them is granted to Administrator and User groups.

To explain the theory, let's consider working on the website of a voluntary association that organizes various projects through a Central Coordination Team and a number of specific Committees. The institutional part of the website is open to the public, but the site also contains pages that are specific for each project, and can only be consulted by members of the committee that follow each one, and by the members of the Central Coordination team. 

As you can see, there are different members according to the Central Coordination Team and the different Committees, but Member 1 is part of all the groups and will need to have access to all locked pages, as this member will be the Administrator. 

In order to make our example more complete, let's assume that, in addition to the sections on each project, the association's website also includes a number of pages containing reference material that visitors can only consult after they have registered on the website.

These are the crucial steps to create a voluntary association website with the above reported features:

• Add in the Sitemap all the necessary pages, including the public and the locked ones.
• Add the contents to the pages.
• As you know how many people will need to have access to the members' areas, create the users for both the Central Coordination Team and the Committees (see: How to define users and groups with access to Locked Pages).
• Activate the automatic registration for the Visitors who want to access the locked pages  (this function is available for the Pro edition only. See: How to enable automatic user registration).
• Define the access details for the Administrator (see: How to define access parameters for the Administrator).
• Set the pages referred to the projects of the different Committees and the pages with the reference material as "locked", and associate each page to the groups having access to it (see: How to set up Locked Pages).  
• Set up the page where users can log in (see: How to set up the login page) and the landing page to be displayed afterwards (see: How to set the page to be displayed after the login). 
• Save your project and export it online.
• Having set up the automatic registration for the users, make sure to manage the registrations using the online Control Panel, as well as to update the project according to the new registrations you get (see: How to manage users who register automatically). 

When the website is published on the Internet, each time a visitor tries to display a Locked page he will be asked to enter his e-mail and password. If these parameters are entered correctly, the Locked page will be displayed. 

#tip - Login & Logout. Users can access locked pages by using the Login & Logout Object you can add on the header or in the desired pages.

Warning:

• In order for the Members' Area to work properly, please make sure the Server you will export your website on supports both PHP programming language  and the sessions. You can get more information about these aspects in the WebSite Test area on the online Control Panel and, if you are using the Pro edition, on the WebSite X5 Manager App.
• If you are using the Pro edition and you want to set up the Automatic User Registration, you will need to use MySQL Databases.
• Locked pages are displayed without any previous login on the local preview: the Members' Area is in fact activated only after the website is published on server.

#tip - Database and project export. If you decide to export your website using the Webspace offered by WebSite X5, you don't have to do anything: the database and server connection parameters are already integrated. If, on the other hand, you choose another Provider, you will need to report them manually. Please see: How to export your website using a Hosting Service different from the one included with WebSite X5.