I have built a website using html and css (in Dreamveaver CS4) on which I would like to create a section that is only accessible to registered users - users would have to submit their email address and create a password to access the area. I am prepared to take the time to learn with tutorials etc, but I'm a beginner with limited ability of html etc, so I would really appreciate some advice on what would be the easiest way of doing something like this - Drupal? JQuery? I have tried searching online for tutorials but I am getting hundreds of different answers using different solutions and would really appreciate your opinions on how to do this in the easiest possible way.
Many thanks in advance :)
Just pick a tutorial for a scripting language that your web hosting supports. PHP is pretty common: http://phpeasystep.com/phptu/6.html
I would suggest using server side scripting for your login.
For this you would need
A place to store user data
A script that can validate the user
data.
Use whatever scripting language your host supports for this.
You can either use a flat file (text file) to store user data by encrypting it in it or you can use a database (best)
You can write a small script that is called when the user logs in and sets the cookie in the browser
In the pages that only logged in users can view, you can add a small piece of code to verify from the cookie, if it validates, display the data or display something like Authorized users only.
This is a very basic functionality but if that is all you want, this should do it.
Well, you'd need a database on the server to store the username/password combinations. That means you'd need some server side language to interact with the database to check for valid username/password combinations, as well as using the server side language to know -when- to check for username/pw (e.g. which page(s) are password protected).
If you're on a Windows server, MS Access is generally considered to be a good starting point for database, but I'd recommend mySQL or SQL Server for the long run.
For language, there's a ton to choose from. ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, etc. I'm a ColdFusion person, so take this with the bias that implies , but I think CF is the easiest for a beginner to learn.
Related
I'm designing a website where users can upload comments on pages, and other users should see those comments. I reached the stage where I have the comments stored in a database, and I know the place they're supposed to go in the html, and I need to connect those two things somehow.
I'm using express and Node.js on the server side, and postgres on the db side.
As of when I'm asking this, it seems to me it's very bad practice to have the user access the database. So I think the server needs to access the database based on the user's request, modify the generalized html's showing of comments to now have the information of the specific comments, save that to a file, and send it to the user. To do this I was thinking of creating an "html generator function" on the server-side that takes in specific comment information and puts it in the generalized html, but that seems like it doesn't scale well and I'm concerned that storing the intermediate file would be inefficient.
Is that the correct approach? Can you tell me known ways of doing this that aren't so hacky?
If you suggest using php, isn't there a problem where php connects to a server and disconnects every time we use it? I would prefer if the server connected once when it booted and did all the fetching when needed instead of connecting every time. It seems to me like that would involve far less overhead (correct me if I'm wrong...)
See the comment of Amadan for the full solution. It's called a "template engine"
Edit:
I highly recommend learning React. I learned EJS and it's difficult to scale. React is infinitely easier to program with for just a little more investment. The old web is much less declarative (& EJS is much less too).
So I'm trying to figure out how to connect to an access database that is on my desktop through html. Everything I've found so far involves the DB being server side and people mentioning ASP.net or just using SQL or mySQL instead. I just need to know how to get the connection up and running. Any help would be appreciated.
You need some kind of web programming language. That can be PHP or ASP.NET or Java or whatever, but you need something else -- HTML can't connect to a database on its own.
I'd highly advise that you take this opportunity to switch to another database server (like SQL Server or MySQL, like you mentioned). Microsoft Access is not well suited to use in web applications.
You're just going to get the same answers here. If you want to stay with Access, ASP.Net is the way to go. Access isn't webbased, most other databases are, so it's a bad fit.
If you want a professional solution, you could get yourself a Sharepoint server and put an Access WebApp on there. But note that this is intended for larger businesses, and priced accordingly, and your database will be limited in features (no VBA for example).
You cannot read or modify files from your (or anyone else) computer with frontend/html/javascript. Yes, you need some backend to connect to your database on your computer/server.
There are databases that work on client side/frontend, like IndexedDB, but it's not ms access and I don't think it's what you want.
I have to develop an application for smartphones using HTML/CSS/JS (for PhoneGap) and I have to store data somewhere.
After some research, I found TaffyDB (http://www.taffydb.com/) that exactly does the job except on one point : security.
I don't want someone to take all my data just by saving the JS file so is there a solution to protect it ?
Or if I want to keep my data private, do I have to use an usual database (like MySQL) coupled with a PHP script that I call via Ajax ?
Thanks for the help.
TaffyDB can be used on Server-Side with a number of server-side solutions, but you will have to control the output on your application to include just the data.
In general, unless you plan to use a javascript server-side solution, I would say you cannot make it "secure", and even if you use non sensitive data on your front-end, I would highly recommend you go through the OSWAP guide before writing any code to determine if it is secure or not.
I have a editable html5 page and I store new elements in localStorage.
I want to synchronize my page with the server.
I want to know if I can do it without a server side script or if there is some tips to do something like this in a good way.
Thank you :)
You can pull information from the server quite easily using jQuery and then just put it on Local Storage but, if you want to upload local information to the server there is no way around, you have to use some kind of script, tough it's not that difficult, there are many languages (PHP, C#, Python...) and tools you can use.
Keep in mind that when you upload information to the server you have to sanitize it very important security measure.
Basically, the way to go is:
Post the information to the server (using AJAX or a HTML form, either way will do)
Use some server-side script to capture the variables posted.
Sanitize your data (check format, discard non-valid characters, etc)
Store it on database (Do not, ever, concatenate your data with a SQL query ok? that can make you vulnerable to a SQL injection attack), compute something or do stuff.
Return some status to the client (some confirmation maybe?)
You may want to take that confirmation and show a message to the user ("Your info was saved properly" or something like that)
is a javascript timer not sufficient for this manner? or jQuery?
The question really should be more of a problem than a question. If you're updating based on a server's variables then you could use AJAX i believe but if its like increment said variable every X seconds I would focus on using a javascript timer.
I'm trying to build a website that provides a login for users. Once these users login, they will be able to perform functions that will likely query a database. At some point I will need to add/modify/delete contents in the database and I'm wondering how I would be able create a page on the website that I'd only have access to. Ideally I wouldn't like to have a page on my website that allows me to edit information in my database because it could be susceptible to attacks. So how would the experts from stackoverflow create a page to edit information in their database?
get db management software like phpMyAdmin
with login abilities (or utilize the authentication by HTTP server)
Well, create a normal page - but put access restrictions on so that you're only allowed to use it if the logged in account is an administrator. (You define the administrator roles, and make sure you are one.)
You might also want to make sure the page is only served to some known IP addresses - although that becomes a pain when you suddenly want to use it from elsewhere...