Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
"Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
I have a colleague who would like me to set up a simple area for her clients to view their works in progress. Here’s an idea I had, but I’d like some feedback:
1. Set up a section, non-searchable, no feed, called “Clients”
2. disallow /Clients in robots.txt
3. Then just have her create new articles in that section, like “Nike Running Poster” and email the URLs to her clients — http://blah.com/Clients/Nike-Running-Poster
It’s security through obscurity, but I’m guessing either 1) she won’t care or 2) I could use TXP’s really basic password authentication as an additional layer of comfort?
Thanks for any advice.
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
If that is what she wants, unprotected clients area, then it sounds good and easy to use. Robots.txt will stop indexing but it doesn’t prevent bad bot activity — it can do the exact opposite.
Last edited by Gocom (2011-01-20 19:36:45)
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Thanks, Jukka. I saw a semi-protected area today: http://justineclaire.squarespace.com/client-area/
Just one field for a “password.”
Now I’m wondering about doing something like adding a custom field called “password” to articles in the clients area. My colleague could type in a password there, and on the front-end, clients would see a password input field, which upon submittal would then show articles matching the custom field.
Thoughts?
Last edited by maruchan (2011-01-20 21:01:21)
Offline
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Thank you. Now I’m just realizing I have no idea how to make a submit button return a list of articles that correspond to a given custom field name. Suggestions appreciated. :-)
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Maybe you could make some use of txp:password_protect
Or for something a little more indepth, have you seen Mr Dales Client Section Tutorial
You could use that as a base and tweak it to your needs
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Personally, I would put in a little bit more effort up front and get ign_password_protect working now, because it gives you more options into the future.
For example, you could then extend to more than one client (the security by obscurity gets harder when more people are sharing a password), allow clients to update their passwords and personal details, and even allow clients to upload stuff directly (eg. they could enter in comments about the work in progress).
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Marc, we’ve implemented something like this for a client site but its not public yet so I can’t share. But – we will write a tutorial on TXP Tips once the portion of the site is live.
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
Tye: I did give the tutorial a read but it seems a bit “hack this, hack that” for my taste. Still, won’t really know how it feels until I try it…
Anura: I need to check out ign_password_protect anyway, so thanks for the reminder. But I’m wondering about the workflow. Would a staff writer-type be able to easily password-protect content/set up users?
Jonathan: Sounds cool, looking forward to that. Thank you.
Last edited by maruchan (2011-01-22 00:44:56)
Offline
Re: "Client Area" without the difficult-to-make bits
maruchan wrote:
Anura: I need to check out ign_password_protect anyway, so thanks for the reminder. But I’m wondering about the workflow. Would a staff writer-type be able to easily password-protect content/set up users?
If it’s not possibly by default, you can always change the privs the user groups have. When it comes to ign_password_protect (and it’s panes), you can modify the add_privs() statements in the plugin’s code, and for TXP’s core panes you can use wonderful bot_privs.
Offline