Profile Manager Premium Case Study: Providing membership to an Online Guild
By CaScA
Greetings Friends!
Guild Masters & Webmasters may find this useful.
The main BoPC Site is Here
Links to pages are colored
I would like to do a case study on PM, as I have looked everywhere
and have had a MySQL database that was not exactly what I wanted
though it worked for a member listing.
Let alone, if you are a Guild Master you know that updating and
constant care of your web presence is time consuming and you find
more work than play time with your guild.
I set out to make BoPC work itself in a manner that members can
do their own updates that our otherwise needed to be done by Admin.
I wanted something more for an Online Game / Guild Orientation
or
at least could be adapted to suit my needs and look as a guild.
This script is the one that can do what I want!
My HTML knowledge and graphic building are greater than Perl
and needed something to enhance that knowledge.
My CGI building is limited in knowledge but I had
proggies like PerlStudio and ActiveState Perl to at least make
a members listing database.
These programs worked and taught well enough but with my knowledge
of Perl I had to keep looking for something that had a base
of what I wanted and would also utilize my skills to give
the look, feel and whatever I wanted to have done via a script
for my
perception of an Online Gaming Guild.
Keep in mind that I left what was written in the cgi's intact
for future reference, but took out some rows in forms and or links
to pages I wanted for members only.
Reason being is my last database was set up like this :
Members could create an account, edit only their personal information
and only certain information (game character info) could be seen
by the public.
But, many people would create an account just because they could.
Although creating an account was all they could do, as admin had
to apporve the account first before any edits could be made, it
still made work for me to disapprove and delete the bogus accounts.
Now, with PM I find it is exactly what I want for BoPC. I also
want to add here , that Cold Fusion will work very well together
with PM and more can be done. I chose not to use CF at the present.
Let's start on what I have done with PM :
I use Dreamweaver UltraDev as my html editor.
If anyone uses DW you know that to be careful with changing things
and uploading before you see the scripts working.
Because DW likes to change things on it's own :)
I followed the instructions that comes with PM and uploaded it
as a base.
I had to make sure it was working correctly "as is"
before changing things.
Everything was in working order so I began to change things to
suit the look and feel of BoPC's web presence.
(So that I do not have to have Aytekin Tank download my images
and so forth, I will place new window links to the pages I have
changed)
First things first : I change my menu to have a Members Login
and a Members Only Area. The Clan Members only area being user and
password protected. The
Login is where members login and or the public can view
profiles.
The clan members only area is where members register as the register
link has been taken out from the index page.
This adds more protection to Guild Members and also as above,
people just can't register at will. For an online game guild we
are particular on who joins us. Although we give many a "fair
shake" (trial period) . So remove that register link if you
do not want people adding accounts just because they can and are
not serious about joining your guild. As you can see, I have not
linked the word "register" and have no intentions of
doing so, but the register page is a form and you can leave intact
or change things, just remember to change %%name%% and base =
name, in the scripts.
Next I change all the html
pages to look the way I want to. Again I use the index to
point this out. The header and menu match the rest of the site.
Simple task. All html pages are editable to look as you want,
just be careful on changing tags.
Once that is done, I move to the scripts and change what I need
to, but change 1 thing at a time. Unless you are pro at CGI, you
may become confused and have to keep starting over and over, no
asking on how I know this :)
I added where I was told to in the instrucions the base XXXX
and the %%xxxx%%, but left all else intact for possible future
reference. Once everything was working I then turn the last part
of what I found a little confusing.
Uploading images : it is important to follow the instructions
as to adding or removing from the prepm.cfg
@base = (
login, ID, password, update_date, register_date,
image1, image2, image3, name, email, address,
state, country, tel, age, status, sex, occupation,
quote, hobbies, homepage, news, company, company_url,
notes, community, rname, clan, game, gametime,server,
refer, image4, image5, image6
All I did was add to this in case I want to use any in the future,
and would be less work for me, as all I would need do is add the
%%xxxx%% to the forms.
@base_image = ("image1", "image2", "image3",
"image4", "image5", "image6"); and
%default = (
'image1'=>'/Members/images/none.gif',
'image2'=>'/Members/images/none.gif',
'image3'=>'/Members/images/none.gif',
'image4'=>'/Members/images/none.gif',
'image5'=>'/Members/images/none.gif',
'image6'=>'Members/images/none.gif',
I will keep adding like this until I reach the number of awards
that the guild has to offer clan members.
Advice : Do not change this line in pmpre.cfg $imagesdir = "images/";
again, don't ask how I know this :)
Ok, I will tell you.
The line I hade was $imagesdir = "Members/images/";
even though that is correct as to where the images are, it should
not be changed, as you will not be able to upload pics.
I had to get help from the Tank Miester on that one :)
This Script "Profile
Manager" is highly customizable and the potential of
it's use is vast. I reccomend it to Guild Masters and Clan Webmasters as a must have.
I also recomend it to Web Masters for other uses.
I hope you have success with this script as I am having. I just
wish I would have found it before doing a MySQL database. That
cost me playtime with guild members :( I had this script up and
running in 1 day and I am now back to playing on my free time
instead of working a web clan site.
WTWYILAD!...CaScA
Profile Manager Premium
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