Member Avatar for Vampdee

I have a client that is asking me to design the user specific area of a commerce site.
Basically, when a user creates an account (such as an account on Amazon or any other typical e-commerce site), there would be a user specific area that would contain the purchases the user has made in the past. The purchases are videos so they would actually be hosted there under their profile for them to access.
I am not clear how to generate a user specific content area like this.
Do I need a CMS? Out of the box already developed solutions that I can tweak are prefered but I am not sure where to start.
Any help would be appreciated.

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Starting from a platform that already handles accounts and payments and then adding a small amount of custom code for media access and metrics is the most pragmatic path. is correct to prefer a prebuilt base to speed delivery; was right that per-video traffic adds complexity; and 's point about evaluating existing e-commerce stacks is useful for the billing side. The work breaks down into a few clear pieces: access control, secure delivery, and server-side logging/aggregation for analytics.

A practical MVP workflow:

  • Define core user stories (purchase, play, view history, simple view counts).
  • Design a minimal data model: users, videos, purchases, playback logs.
  • Host encoded video files on object storage and serve via a CDN when possible.
  • Implement server-side checks that verify purchase/permission before issuing short-lived signed URLs to the player.
  • Aggregate playback logs in a background job to compute reliable counts (avoid client-side counters for authoritative metrics).

Example minimal schema:

CREATE TABLE purchases (
  id INT PRIMARY KEY,
  user_id INT NOT NULL,
  video_id INT NOT NULL,
  purchased_at TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
  expires_at TIMESTAMP NULL,
  order_ref VARCHAR(64)
);

CREATE TABLE playback_log (
  id INT PRIMARY KEY,
  user_id INT,
  video_id INT,
  event_time TIMESTAMP,
  ip VARCHAR(45),
  event_type VARCHAR(20)
);

Server-side access check (pseudocode):

if not authenticated(user): return 401
if not has_purchase(user.id, video_id): return 403
signed_url = create_signed_url(video_path, ttl=300)
log_playback(user.id, video_id, ip, now)
return { "play_url": signed_url }

UX and operational notes: show purchases with thumbnail, date, and a single-play entry point; allow filtering and export for the user. Prioritize secure playback and accurate server-side logging in the MVP, then add richer analytics and dashboards. Important cautions: use HTTPS and a PCI-compliant payment provider, plan for storage/CDN costs, rate-limit streaming endpoints, and treat logged analytics as the source of truth rather than client reports.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for roje0913

zen cart is a nice free shopping cart system that you can customize and mod pretty easily.

Member Avatar for remarkablyso

There are many Open Source CMS available. Zen Cart is a popular shopping cart, whilst Wordpress and Joomla are popular content-orientated management systems, though both include the option to add a shopping cart feature via 3rd party addons.

I recently did a similar website for a client, only the items were flash files. To do the website I used Wordpress with a 3rd party shopping cart addon.

Edited by remarkablyso because: n/a
Member Avatar for Vampdee

There are many Open Source CMS available. Zen Cart is a popular shopping cart, whilst Wordpress and Joomla are popular content-orientated management systems, though both include the option to add a shopping cart feature via 3rd party addons.

I recently did a similar website for a client, only the items were flash files. To do the website I used Wordpress with a 3rd party shopping cart addon.

hmmm. Ok. I have looked at Joomla and I see how to add users, but I am just not clear on how to make it user specific once they sign in.... That is the part that is eludeing me. I see how I can give them permissions to one area over another but....

I am not afraid to write code, I am just trying to figure out where to start since I have never done a site like this before.
In this case, the items are videos and they will want the users to be able to see how much traffic their video receives also....

And of course, if there is a package already written that can speed things up, that is all the better for my client.

Thank's for the replies. Keep em coming :-)

Edited by Vampdee because: n/a
Member Avatar for remarkablyso

You want users to see how much traffic the videos are recieving as well? This is getting more and more complex.

As far as I know, there's no out-of-the-box software that will do this, you're going to have to alter it in some way; you'll have to code.

Member Avatar for Vampdee

You want users to see how much traffic the videos are recieving as well? This is getting more and more complex.

As far as I know, there's no out-of-the-box software that will do this, you're going to have to alter it in some way; you'll have to code.

OK. Well, I guess I'll start with a CMS and go from there. :-)
Thanks for the input!

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