How do I create a Members Area

[OzeTigerman]

I'm an amateur web designer using Frontpage.
I have a golf professional friend who wants me to design a web site for him and he wants a members area.
Each member would have to login using their own user name and password and would then be able to access certain parts of the web site.
How do I go about setting all this up?
Would I have to set up a database of members and their passwords using MySQL? (I know nothing about MySQL - only that I see I can use it when I'm in Cpanel)
If anyone can help I'd be most grateful.
Thanks
OzeTigerman

[GiorgosK]

Wow this question requires some lengthy answer if it were to be done properly and since we are in the lounge and this is not the place for asking for help I am going to just give you a very brief overview.

First of all, frontpage or dreamweaver won't just do the magic for you. And its not like flipping some switches in the CPanel ....

You will need some undertanding of a scripting language (progamming language customarily on the web such as PHP, ASP, JSP) and SQL (which is a language to communicate with MySQL databases) and how the scripting language just glues all these together to produce HTML.

To give you a way to think about the whole process for your golf site, the scripting language code (that you will create) should have the intelligence to use specific SQL commands to add/delete/modify/authenticate users in your database and then pass this information to the browser in a way that it can understand and display to the website visitor.

I suppose learning all these can take some considerable amount of time, but if you are ready to proceed, start learning HTML, CSS, SQL and one of the scripting languages.
Two good places to start are http://www.w3schools.com and http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com .

Alternativelly you can skip learning all these and just install a content management system (CMS) on your server and try to configure it to do what you want it to. A good way to start would be to test some of the CMSs on http://www.opensourcecms.com can use fantastico in your CPanel to install some of those CMSs on your own server.

[OzeTigerman]

Thanks for all that. It looks as though I might have bitten off more than I can chew.
I will look into your suggestions and see if it's too big for me or not.
If this isn't the place to ask for help, where do you suggest I go??
cheers

[GiorgosK]

You are welcome,

I do not mean to play it authority, but as this post says http://www.daniweb.com/forums/announcement47-56.html here is only the lounge and support questions are for other places. But I think the way we proceeded is OK by the admins.

Ask specific sql or MySQL questions in the "database" section ask your scripting questions in the appropriate "php" or "asp" or "jsp" or "ruby" section and ask HTML/CSS questions in the "webdesign" section Once questions arise.