[havensal]

I have been asked to make a web site for our volunteer fire dept.

I have made a couple simple ones before but this one is going to be more difficult.

We want to have a section that requires a login to view. We want to post videos of our training and be able to comment on them. But don't want it open to just anyone.

Any tips on where to start learning how to do this? Websites would be prefered but I am not against buying a book or two.

Is this something out of the range of a relative beginner?

As for hosting, someone mentioned www.justhost.com/ but I am a little hesitant.

Any recommendations?

We are all volunteers (read broke) so cheaper is always better.

[Toyman]

You can do the login thing many different ways, perhaps the simplest is using an .htaccess file. Commenting could be more difficult. Using PHP would be quite a bit more difficult for a beginner.

You could probably do everything you wanted to with a Wordpress blog, including the commenting.

[prism]

if you pay for hosting which uses "cpanel" control panel, it will probably have an option to password protect selected directories.


another option is to install free forum software in a directory. set it to viewable by members only. only let your group register. then post the vids in the forum, and folks can add comments just like they do here.

don't forget that forum software needs to be kept updated.

[JimmyN]

You could use an .htaccess file, and that would give you a login to restrict access. But that doesn't take care of your need to add comments to the videos.

Look into the program Gallery 2, or even the Gallery 1 version. It does images and videos, albums can be individually protected so you can choose who can access different areas. Comments can be added to videos/photos by users that are logged in, and it will even send out emails when new items are added so all users know about the latest additions.

And it's open source freeware so the price is right. If it doesn't turn out to be what you want you haven't lost anything other than the time to set it up and try it out. I currently use Gallery 1 on two different websites.

[havensal]

Thanks. I will have to look into these.

No doubt I will be back with more questions.