Pre-Sale question

Hi,

I would like to have a closed site limited to a predetermined group of people. Can 68 easily be configured or modified to not be visible/navigable until the user has successfully logged in?

Thanks,
Brian

[Eric Barnes]

Hi,

Sure this is possible. It would taking altering the template files and adding a few if statements in but should be an easy task.

In order to guide you we probably will need more information such as what you want seen and not seen.

Ideally, I would want to be presented with the log-in before anything else is visible. User accounts would be created by admin.

Another question. I'm guessing this is possible, but... I want to be able to email daily the complete set of classifieds to a group of people who don't have internet access, but do have email. Is this possible, and if so, any idea how hard this would be to implement? I'm a long time C++ programmer, but new to PHP so there will be a learning curve for me.

Thanks,
Brian

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Ideally, I would want to be presented with the log-in before anything else is visible. User accounts would be created by admin.

By default 68C has 5 user groups. Each user group has its own setting in admin to control what that group sees. I beleive for each group their is a checkbox for "user can view site" or something along those lines. You could set guest accounts so they cant view site. Hide the registration link from users and turn of e-mail validation. Then manually create user accounts for people.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Another question. I'm guessing this is possible, but... I want to be able to email daily the complete set of classifieds to a group of people who don't have internet access, but do have email. Is this possible, and if so, any idea how hard this would be to implement? I'm a long time C++ programmer, but new to PHP so there will be a learning curve for me.

Thanks,
Brian

There is nothing built in to do this. The closest thing would be external.php which builds xml output on the fly when a browser is pointed at it. The easiest thing for you to do would be to copy that file, change its name and use that as a starting point to build your ads. You would then need to add the e-mail functionality to it which bring up many other issues.

If you are on shared hosting doing a mass e-mail often results in issues because ISP choke or limit outbound e-mail so you may need to chek into that.

Just change the xml to html, add in the field sto tie into the existing e-mail class and add a query to the database to loop through users an send an e-mail. You could trigger the calling of the script from cron so its run once a day.

[Mike-N-Tosh]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Another question. I'm guessing this is possible, but... I want to be able to email daily the complete set of classifieds to a group of people who don't have internet access, but do have email.

Maybe I'm being thick here, but how is it possible for these folks that don't have internet access to have email which is an internet based service?

[seymourjames]

Please explain Mr Unregistered - email without internet access seems at odds unless you talking about full website aces (restricted by a company firewall or by device).

[Lhotch]

I think he means web access.

Many places use e-mail for communication but dont allow web surfing for obvious reasons.

[Mike-N-Tosh]

@Larry
That would be the most logical assumption, but I try not to make assumptions as even on this forum has caught me be surprise way too many times. I know it's caught you too.

@Unregistered
As anyone that is considering doing a classifieds site would hope that it would be successful. What would successful be considered? Let's say a minimum of 1,000 concurrent ad listings. Given that text based email is limited to 80 columns in width, how many lines would one ad listing take? Let's base it on 10 lines which is very conservative, because that would only be 800 characters. So based on that assumption, let's do the math... 1,000 (listings) X 10 lines (per listing) = 10,000 lines of text for the listings only AND in TEXT only. I would assume if these users don't have web access that they wouldn't be able to view the ad listing pictures, so that would mean you would include them as attachments??? Naaa, scrap that. You would also then have additional lines of text for your branding such as "Greetings {$username}, (two line breaks here) Here's the listings from {$site_title}: (two more line breaks here), then 10,000 lines of listings, then your site closing remarks/signature Thanks for subscribing to {$site_title) email listings letter, (line break)The ($site_title) Management Team (two more line breaks here) (Mandatory CANSPAM compliance here) Companies physical address information, then Unsubscribe information. (minimum of 4 more lines)" Now that gives us an email of 10,008 minimum lines.

It would take me exactly 1 email, before I would be unsubscribing myself. Add the above <times> how many email subscribers that you have coupled with what Larry already mentioned about your web server's email service. Can you really expect to send out let's say even a minimal 100 emails with over 10,000 lines in each one daily, weekly???

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by Mike-N-Tosh

@Larry
That would be the most logical assumption, but I try not to make assumptions as even on this forum has caught me be surprise way too many times. I know it's caught you too.

I hear where you are coming from for sure, dont get me wrong I generally love details and reasons why people want to do something because often times knowing why helps to come up with a better solution. However in this case I think the reason behind doing what s/he wants to do (e-mail a list of ads) is irrelevant to the conversation.

[seymourjames]

Make a pdf and email it