Website hosting & Member login

[tcdb28]

I'm undertaking the task of designing and maintain a website. I am looking for advice on website hosting & some aspects of its design.

The guy wants the website to have a welcome page and individual pages for other aspects of his work(which i can do), however, he also wants a special members login to post member directories and other things of that nature. I have iWeb 09. Can i do the one page member login using that software, or do i need some other brand?

Also, other than mobile me (which i know is both great and mediocre at the same time) are there any good web hosting services or solutions that offer quality support for iweb and a user login (ease of use and affordability are key!)?

Thanks for any help!

 

[seanb511]

I am not sure if iweb 09 or any version of iweb supports password authentication, but the other requests(posting certain things, by certain access), defiantly require some sort of cms(content-management-system). Cms also does have the ablitily to change permissions of certain users(which allows one person the ablity to view, with another allowing them add edit,etc).
If you dont want to create your own, I would recommend searching google for free content management systems,
The two best free ones out there are cushyCMS, and Drupal.
I havent used cushyCMS(im trying to write my own) but from the website it doesnt look that difficult to use. Drupal can be very difficult, but also very easy at the same time. I would recommend checking those to out, and see which one you like better, and if you dont like neither find another one you do like, it helps, just make sure it allows you to do what you want and it has a good extensibility framework(never know when you need new features on the site).
Hosting recommendations
I here very good things of Dreamhost, and Media Temple.
Dreamhost is a lot cheaper to run per month, but Media Temple has a very good control panel.

Good Luck, I hope i helped.

 

[angelwatt]

You'll want to stay away from iWeb for this type of functionality (without a lot of extra hassle). It's just not designed for this type of web site. You'll want to learn a little about server side languages like PHP and make use of existing web apps that can handle most of the functionality you're looking for. You'll want to make sure your host has a database as well as these systems we'll likely use them.