Re: Questions/Recommendations on Content/Membership Based Website [Sorry, Ended Up Long]

From: Terence (tk.lists_at_fastmail.fm)
Date: 11/04/03

  • Next message: Good Man: "Re: PHP 4.3.3 with GD2 library installer" 
    Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 11:31:56 +1100
To: Bozo Schmozo <hate@spam.com>

    Bozo Schmozo wrote:

    > Greetings!
    >
    > I've searched groups.google.com already to see if I can determine if
    > using PHP/MySQL (if needed) for a web site I wish to develop. As the
    > subject indicated, it will be a content based site with videos - NO,
    > it's not a porn site though.
    >
    > I thought that I'd list the key requirements/specifications for my web
    > site below and was wondering if some of you'd be so kind as to provide
    > your thoughts on each and comment on them with respect to how PHP can
    > accomplish them or how adept PHP is at accomplishing them?
    >
    > (FYI, I'm an Oracle developer and haven't had too much "real"
    > programming/coding practice since I finished school, but I can still,
    > given enough time to familiarize myself, C/C++/Java and some OOP. But
    > I really haven't had any experience in setting up a website/webserver
    > at all.)
    >

    OK here's the thing. If you're used to C/C++/Java, you'll proabably find
    PHP frustrating since it is not strongly typed or highly structured. On
    the other hand, once you get stuck into building a website, PHP is your
    friend, and you will be glad you won't have to waste hours and hours of
    your valuable time writing mundane functionality like file uploads or
    manuafacturting sessions (for a connectionsless protocol - HTTP) or
    whatever. PHP does all this crappy mundane work for you. So if it's web
    apps you're writing, PHP is your friend.
    If you're not convinced, take a look at the functions reference in the
    manual and then think about how much fun you can have trying to produce
    the same functionality with other technologies.

    > -- Strong authentication required since it will be membership based.
    > Someone had suggested that I use a third party billing company, such
    > as iBill, PayCom, CCBill and etc, to simplify the billing process and
    > I'm looking into it. I know it's sounding more and more like an adult
    > site, but it's not. However, if PHP/MySQL offers a better billing
    > method/member info DB maintenance capability and membership
    > authentication, please inform me.
    >

    You provide the authentication system that you want. You have to
    understand that with web apps, authentication options go beyond the
    langauge technology of the app. So for instance, you could set up
    http://www.cgi101.com/class/password/mod_auth_mysql.html
    and get the webserver to request uname/password. (recommend using SSL
    (https) in conjunction).

    What do you mean by strong?
    You can go as far as issuing certificates to all your members so that
    your webserver will give them access based on identifying the
    certificate in the web browser. Again, this has nothing to do with Java,
    C++, or PHP...

    Most PHP developers, however, hack up their own system using HTML forms
    (for login and password) with varying levels of success. If you are
    going to do it this way, you will want to get familiar with cookies
    because you need them to simulate a session -- check out PHP's
    out-of-the-box session functionality
    http://au3.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php
    PHP also provides tools for a great many encryption options if you want
    to "role your own" authentication system.
    http://au3.php.net/manual/en/ref.mcrypt.php

    > -- The instructional videos probably will not be
    > updated/switched/added too often. The same goes for the accompanying
    > pictures for the lessons. The pics though will need to have an
    > accompanying explanation.
    >

    sounds like a gallery to me :/

    > -- There will be about 30 videos in all, all about 45 seconds to a
    > minute in length.
    >
    > -- I wish to be able to create a member page which they will be
    > greeted with once they log in, muck like "My eBay" over at eBay.com
    > with the following showing, among other things:
    > A) Each member will have a lesson plan according to their expertise
    > or level of completed lessons and I wish to be able for members to
    > maintain a record of which lessons they've completed in each of the
    > plans and which lessons they still need to complete displayed in some
    > chart form.
    >

    OK, you want to role your own :/

    > B) I wish to, though it may sound impossible or wishful thinking, be
    > able to prevent straight copying or lifting of my pages, including the
    > videos and the pictures. I know I can disable "right click", but
    > besides that is there anyway I can prevent it from happening? I have
    > worked very hard and spent long hours in developing the content for
    > this website and I'd hate for any copycat websites to just lift my
    > pages somehow and use it as their own on their own website.
    >

    As previously mentioned, you can never prvent dupliation once the
    metrial reaches the user. All you can do is make it trickier.

    If you stream things, that will make it difficult. I think Quicktime has
    this thing where it will blank the player window in the event of a
    screen-dump. Not sure which other players support this. If you're really
    keen, you can display your pictures as streamed content in the video
    player - no, this will not impact on bandwidth requirements as much as
    you think. It all depends on how much effort you want to go to.

    While Real Media (Helix) is pretty much the coolest (Trust me, I've
    looked around), I found a utility which will capture streams and turn
    them into AVIs (at reduce quality).
    http://r7cproj.euro.ru/indexe.htm
    Cool ey? :)
    No? :(
    I know, I'm not helping ;)

    Don't forget, the streaming server is separate to the web server and
    also provides authentication options. You need this to prevent people
    simply copying the address of the streaming server and handing it around
    to their friends.

    Don't go near the right click prevention idea as a security "solution"
    -- you know better than that. Mozilla is a main browser, I can hit
    Ctrl-U and see the sourcecode regardless of oncontextmenu="return
    false;" in the body tag -- javascript or no javascript. Viewing the
    source code is not bound to a freaking mouse operation -- nor should it be.

    Maybe the latest version of Flash will allow you to stream directly from
    a video streaming server through a flash movie object. Who knows, the
    product never ceases to amaze me. If so, you could embed the streaming
    server authentication stuff in the actionscript logic and get
    actionscript to query the server for the authentication details based on
    the [PHP] session [ID]. Then it doesn't matter if people grab the flash
    file, it won't work for them, they still need to have a PHP session.
    You could load your pictures from there server too (I know this is
    possible with flash), also based on a valid session.

    The only way people would be able to get video then is through their
    TV-out card and into a DV camcorder or another capture card :)
    Still wouldn't solve the image lifting issue since people can still do
    screendumps.

    > -- If the site membership grows, I'd imagine that there'd be many
    > simultaneous access to the membership content, including the videos.
    >

    yeah, get a big fat pipe. Tweak your stream bitrate options to reduce
    traffic while still maintaining the product. Again, nothing to do with
    programming technology.

  • Next message: Good Man: "Re: PHP 4.3.3 with GD2 library installer"

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