Implementing a membership system for CoverYourASP was simple in concept, but ended up touching a lot of pages, and created 10 new ones!

Here's what I wanted, and got, from my system - I'll go through each one in the following pages:

• Members can register themselves via a form.
• Validation of membership changes via email.
• Sign in/out using users email address and password.
• Option to sign in automatically using a cookie (low security).
• Ability to send password to members who forget.
• Multiple levels of membership with more functionality.
• Free Bronze membership has database storage of site personalization.
• Easy upgrade to higher membership level using PayPal.
• Members-only area available only to Silver members.

Registering new members

You can view the real source code here, but before you do, I should tell you that the same form is also used to edit existing member information too.

A simple call to IsLoggedIn ( ) - a function defined in the utils/Login.asp file - allows me to tell which task I'm undertaking with the form. It also controls what action I'm taking in the database, as the excerpt below shows:

// connect to the database DBInitConnection ( ); if ( IsLoggedIn ( ) ) {    // update the member information    oConnection.Execute ( 'UPDATE Members SET Name=\'' + sName + '\',Email=\'' + sEmail + '\',MemberPassword=\'' + sPassword1 + '\' WHERE MemberID=' + nMemberID ); } else {    // create the new member record    oConnection.Execute ( 'INSERT INTO Members (Name,Email,MemberPassword) VALUES ("' + sName + '","' + sEmail + '","' + sPassword1 + '");' ); } // release the database DBReleaseConnection ( );

Having added the new member to the database, there is one more step the user must take before he can sign in...

Part 2: Email validation of membership changes...