Profile Manager Premium Case Study: PowerPig Internet Radio
Written by: Chris
PowerPig Radio, developed by myself, began with my ideas and thoughts, in
June, 2000. I wanted an internet radio station that was different from the
rest of the plain audio streaming servers found on ShoutCAST and other
Websites. I wanted to develop an internet radio station with a live studio
and live DJ's, and that is my focus on the project at this time. Plans to
have the studio moved from my old address to my new one should be completed
in a couple of months. PowerPig Radio has just been accepted into two
affiliate programs. One with MTV for streaming their news content, and the
other with TicketMaster, giving away free concert tickets to listeners in
contests and promotions. I'm glad to be the only 'internet' station able to
do this.
Profile Manager Premium(a cgi membership software), after several modifications by me, is utilized on
the site in several ways, interacting with several other software solutions.
While most of my software solutions use a SQL backend, PMpre does not, and I
will not modify it by converting the scripts to DBI out of respect for the
copyright owner(s) of the other version of Profile Manager (Professional)
which I do not own a license for.
One of which is VolanoChat Pro 2.1. which
is capable of reserving membernames for users. The best example of
VolanoChat Pro is Volano's biggest customer: PlanetOut Partners (gay.com).
VolanoChat Pro sends out an HTTP GET request to two simple scripts that I
wrote to check the pipe delimited pm.dat file for the first cell
(membername) and the 3rd cell (password) and the 47th cell (chat profile).
If the username and password DO NOT match, the script returns, in plain
text, 'false' denying the member access. If the username and password in the
login applet match, the script returns, in plain text, the following:
true
Profile Line
thus granting access to the user and adding his stored profile line
(%%chatbio%%) in the chat applet. If a visitor logs in, VolanoChat checks
the database to see if a visitor is trying to use a registered membername.
If the name exists in the database, then it returns 'true' denying the
member the right to use that name. If the name does not exist, the script
returns 'false' allowing the user to use that name. Also, if a member is
listed as a Member Monitor (a member with chat admin-remove-kick-ban
priveleges), profile manager premium software provides the user with the
chat control panel that I have
developed. VolanoChat Pro also provides a link in the chat bio line to a
'Member Document', which i point to the %%static url%% like this:
http://members.powerpigradio.com/pages/%0 where %0 is the %%login%%.
Profile Manager Premium, on my user control panel, has a link to
automatically log a user into my WebMail interface, can log a user into my
forums (vBulletin), my FTP server, and my guestbook.
I have also developed an admin_modify panel that has fields for the user
login, password, and registration_ID field so that ALL fields are easily
modified if necessary.
I have added an .htaccess file into the static pages directory
'members.powerpigradio.com/pages/' and the only thing contained in the
.htaccess file is ErrorDocument404: error.html. error.html is a search
page, so when a member can't find a static url page, they get a search page
instead of a 404 error page.
I also added variables into the register and modify templates, allowing a
user to select background and text colors for their member profile, as well
as use a JavaScript for thumbnail images that thumbnails uploaded images and
when a user clicks on one, it expands it in the main image window. I have
also added the AOL Instant Messenger remotes, ICQ contact Panels, and Yahoo
Messenger indicators to work with each member profile.
In the very near future, when I have time, I will use the upload.cgi in a
second way, which is for Independent bands to register a profile and upload
an audio file to the server for others to listen to.
Membership Profile Software
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