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

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.)

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

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.

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

Those are the key requirements/specs I can think of for now, which I
wish to implement on my website. Any comments, suggestions, or help
would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was that I wish to implement a "form
login" for the members. But from what I understand, this is a java
based application? Can someone please verify this and is it still
possible to implement it using PHP? Thanks again.

"Bozo Schmozo" <hate@spam.com> wrote in message
news:4qnrpv02v280ar42593j4hm9j239c1hht5@4ax.com...
> 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.)
>
> -- 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.
>
> -- 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.
>
> -- 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.
>
> 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.
>
> -- If the site membership grows, I'd imagine that there'd be many
> simultaneous access to the membership content, including the videos.
>
> Those are the key requirements/specs I can think of for now, which I
> wish to implement on my website. Any comments, suggestions, or help
> would be greatly appreciated!

This sounds like a pretty simple project. One that the PHP/MySQL/Apache
team is ideally suited to. I would leave credit card stuff to an outside
service. Not that PHP can't handle it.

A) is simple.
B) is not possible, to my knowledge. You can make it difficult for people
to hijack your content, but you cannot make it impossible, and still deliver
it to them. Disabling right-click only works if the browser allows it. If
I tell my browser to ignore your javascript, I can right click and steal
your images. Even if you require javascript on your site, I can dig your
images out of my cache. I can copy/paste my browser window into Paintbrush
and crop your images out. Similarly, you can stream your video content to
the end user, but you cannot prevent him from saving that stream and
stealing your video content. In a nutshell, if you deliver content to me,
I can steal it if I want to.

JM

"Bozo Schmozo" <hate@spam.com> wrote in message
news:0ehtpv08pqu9lqekq2gu8ap7fsqgkda1ma@4ax.com...
> Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was that I wish to implement a "form
> login" for the members. But from what I understand, this is a java
> based application? Can someone please verify this and is it still
> possible to implement it using PHP? Thanks again.

Maybe I don't know what a 'form login' is, I'm sure someone here will tell
me. But, if you mean present a form to the user rather than a popup, yeah
PHP can do that, no problem.

JM

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:36:46 -0500, "Jim Moseby" <nospam@dontspam.me>
wrote:

>"Bozo Schmozo" <hate@spam.com> wrote in message
>news:0ehtpv08pqu9lqekq2gu8ap7fsqgkda1ma@4ax.com.. .
>> Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was that I wish to implement a "form
>> login" for the members. But from what I understand, this is a java
>> based application? Can someone please verify this and is it still
>> possible to implement it using PHP? Thanks again.
>
>Maybe I don't know what a 'form login' is, I'm sure someone here will tell
>me. But, if you mean present a form to the user rather than a popup, yeah
>PHP can do that, no problem.

Yeah, you nailed it right on the head there. It is a form right on
the webapge and not a popup. Also, thanks for your replies.
Appreciate it.

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...uth_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.

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 11:31:56 +1100, Terence <tk.lists@fastmail.fm>
wrote:

>Bozo Schmozo wrote:
>
>OK here's the thing. If you're used to C/C++/Java, you'll proabably find
[snipped an excellent reply to my amateurish questions]

Terence, that was great. I really appreciated your answers. Thanks
for your time and courtesy.

Bozo Schmozo <hate@spam.com> wrote in message
> (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.

You can write Java but only "some OOP"? How does that work? If you
write Java then you write OOP, yes?





> 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.

That is wishful thinking. For them to view your content it has to
download to their machine, and if it downloads to their machine, then
they can capture. You can make it a little more difficult, but you
can't stop them.

If you are interested in RealNetwork's Helix Universal Server,
I can offer in A FEW hundred bucks.
Standard/Enterprise/Internet Versions avaliable.
For Win32/Linux/FreeBSD.

Please contact me for more details,
Email: SK@wactive.com

Steven

On 4 Nov 2003 08:49:55 -0800, lkrubner@geocities.com (lawrence) wrote:

>Bozo Schmozo <hate@spam.com> wrote in message
>> (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.
>
>You can write Java but only "some OOP"? How does that work? If you
>write Java then you write OOP, yes?

Do I have a full and total grasp of inheritance, object/data
encapsulation, polymorphism and understand the finer points of
designing hierchies and dynamic binding or even genericity? No. Just
because you can write apps in Java doesn't mean you're practicing
proper, let alone pure OOP.

There's more to OOP than just method overloading.