PHP church members directory

ejcross;223160 wrote: I guess the other stuff I can add in.

If that is the case, you should also be able to write your own login files.

If you have the knowledge and ability to edit ready made scripts for what you need, you should make it all yourself as a login script and simple database isn't much code and is fairly easy to do

SO if you already know a bit of PHP, it will be straight forward to look at a few tutorials on the internet and make your own, similiar to how others have done it of course

If you don't feel you can tackle this, I would suspect you also wont be able to later change and edit someone else's script to fit in your requirements
(If I am wrong I apologise)

I asked the very same question when I first started learning PHP, and am glad everyone told me to learn it myself
It did take a few months to pick it all up, but along the way when I got stuck people helped out with the odd bit of code here and there
and now I could write a login script with a database in a very short time

That way you know your own code inside and out and if any problems occur when people start using it you will very likely know where to start looking for a resolve

If you just copy and paste someone elses login script into your site and things start going wrong or you need to change it, you wont know where anything is or how it has been made
And you will spend more time at that point trying to figure it all out than you would if you started now from scratch
you may also find yourself under pressure as users will not be able to login and other wont be able to join while you learn what does what to fix or change something

Also it is much easier to tailor the script to do exactly what you require if you make it yourself
there are many tutorials out there for login scripts, but are all different and serve different purposes

I know it sounds like the hardest approach, and you just want a quicky script now so users can login and then mess with it later, but believe me, you will be much better off for both time and knowledge now and most certainly in the future if you learn from the start

I would start by searching Google for "php login script" and similiar keywords
look at a few tutorials and what php code is required
you will also need to look at making a database, and deciding what information form users you need to store and possibly retrieve

If you disagree or need more info or help, just ask. plenty of people here remember they where once new to php and will help you

Good luck

Have you considered a CMS for this? It may be overkill, but it will allow you to expand. I'm still working on getting Drupal running for our church so that leaders of the different ministries can edit their pages and also have a calendar of events that visitors can view and staff can update.

One thing that I couldn't tell from your posting is who will put the initial directory. If it is all user submitted that should be fine, but if you plan on just taking your membership list and posting it online, even though you have to log in to get to it, some people in this day of widespread identity theft, will not like that.

I'm also setting up a site for a local American Legion district, where the local post officers can login and have access to the officer's contact info. Well even though this is published information that can be obtained by members asking for it (and in fact I got the list as it was given to me at a meeting when they were recompiled), and also even though it was going to be set that only accounts verified to be that of post officers could access it, many people expressed concern over their phone # and address being "online". It really is the older crowd that are not online. Seems they associate it being "online" to being available to everyone. So just wanted to bring that up in case you hadn't thought about that.

If you do find a script though somewhere that does what you are asking, please come back and post a link to it here, as I would like to see what all features they have available.

-Greg

Greg and Greg,

Thanks for the information. As far as PHP, I would consider myself a newb to it, and was considering writing the script portion myself, other than the login and security part. I was looking to find a package that was already together however, and add a few tweaks to it if needed for the input and information layout portion.

I am looking into using joomla as a CMS and I think it already has a member login portion, it would just take putting in the directory portion that I want to display, so I'll keep you up to date on that. And if I find a ready made package, or create one, I'll post it here too.

THanks again!