WHY LOG INS????

[Ricky2443]

I have a general question,why the use of log-ins and MySQL or Access DB's on these sites. I've been looking around and a lot of people have them, my question is what purpose do they serve? I've created Log-In's on websites that need identification to access sensitive material but what top secret documents could we possible have on a robotics web page? Is it just to impress the judges that we can put useless DB's and coding into our website? Please enlighten me.

Our site has a member database, including adresses and phone numbers. That's not public, so we protect it.

[Joe J.]

Our website has logins for posting in our forums, so only people who have business posting there can. Also our member profiles contain phone numbers and address and those can be viewed by logged in members. Besides the member profiles everything on our site is viewable to the public.

www.lightningrobotics.com

[Joohoo]

yeah thats pretty much why we do it too. The addresses, phone #'s and some of the more personal stuff thats on our forums.

[FourPenguins]

In the site we're planning, logins would be used for sensitive personal information, but we might use cookies to customize content to some degree. (eg. someone from the End Effectors team could choose to be sent immediately to the "End Effectors" page)
However, the main use of logins would be to update the site. Not everyone on our team is well-versed in HTML, so there are plans in the works for some kind of blog-style update system, which would of course need a login.

[Aaron D.]

we have a login for our forum as well, which contains inter-team dealings and desgin talks. It is also one of the best ways we can comunicate as a whole team coaches alumni and members all together. on that note, I highly recommend setting up a forum on your team site, we are able to solve lots of problems that arise in th season with a few clicks! It is a great way to keep everyone (pardon the pun) posted on what is going on!!

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Moderation?
Each user having their own profile?
Communication?
Keeping track of things?
Professionalism?
Forum software comes like that?

Because they want to?

[GRaduns340]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Moderation?
Each user having their own profile?
Communication?
Keeping track of things?
Professionalism?
Forum software comes like that?

Because they want to?

Couldn't have said it any better. Those are exactly the reasons we have a login on our site. I'm currently working on an enhancement that will "hide" the login behind something else that's more relevant to the general public, then click a link next to that section and the section content changes from w/e was there to the login so you don't have this login box that stands out like a sore thumb. There are other ways to work around the login so that it doesn't have to be a distraction on your main page if that's what you're worried about.

[Ricky2443]

I understand that you may want to have access to address and phone numbers, ok but thats like 10 people on the team, a cell phone can handle that. Forums ok, but even then is there really that much inter team communication that a forum on every site is necessary. I've been having this argument with my team captain for the past 2 years, our team is a maximum of 10 people a couple of which actually work, I do not see the reason of wasting time and resources on coding interfaces with a database so that 5 people can post messages. Is it not more direct to just instant message a person, those get my attention faster than a forum on my website.

By the way its not a distraction, on other sites i have actually designed the page around some really cool text inputs I designed. I like the way they look.

I've been ripping on you guys a bit, feel free to rip my site to shreds if you'd like. http://www.wolvcatrobotics.com

[chris31]

Originally Posted by Ricky2443

I understand that you may want to have access to address and phone numbers, ok but thats like 10 people on the team, a cell phone can handle that. Forums ok, but even then is there really that much inter team communication that a forum on every site is necessary. I've been having this argument with my team captain for the past 2 years, our team is a maximum of 10 people a couple of which actually work, I do not see the reason of wasting time and resources on coding interfaces with a database so that 5 people can post messages. Is it not more direct to just instant message a person, those get my attention faster than a forum on my website.

By the way its not a distraction, on other sites i have actually designed the page around some really cool text inputs I designed. I like the way they look.

I've been ripping on you guys a bit, feel free to rip my site to shreds if you'd like. http://www.wolvcatrobotics.com

The buttons in the bottom right should say something like "small text" or "large text" or increase text size. Just saying TEXT might not be understood by everyone. Just my 2 cents.

[Tim Arnold]

Well, on our team website the login is critical for the permissions system. If we didn't have team logins, anyone could upload images to our team gallery, post news stories to the front page, steal contact information, planning for robots, sponsorship requests, or muck up the entire website. Our team site is entirely administered through a web-interface so a login system is critical for security reasons. I see no reason that logins hurt the team. We are actually working on a system that you clock-in and out while at the meetings to get a better idea of who and how long members are active. Personally, I think that logins, while they should not be required to view a site, can actually strengthen the team bonding during off season as they don't just forget that everyone else exists for the other half of the year.

[GRaduns340]

Originally Posted by Ricky2443

I understand that you may want to have access to address and phone numbers, ok but thats like 10 people on the team, a cell phone can handle that. Forums ok, but even then is there really that much inter team communication that a forum on every site is necessary. I've been having this argument with my team captain for the past 2 years, our team is a maximum of 10 people a couple of which actually work, I do not see the reason of wasting time and resources on coding interfaces with a database so that 5 people can post messages. Is it not more direct to just instant message a person, those get my attention faster than a forum on my website.

By the way its not a distraction, on other sites i have actually designed the page around some really cool text inputs I designed. I like the way they look.

I've been ripping on you guys a bit, feel free to rip my site to shreds if you'd like. http://www.wolvcatrobotics.com

I understand your point for a team as small as 10 members where it could be easy enough to keep track of contact info for those 10 people, but we have about 50 people from our school. It's much easier with those large numbers to use a forum for mass communication.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Ricky2443

I understand that you may want to have access to address and phone numbers, ok but thats like 10 people on the team, a cell phone can handle that. Forums ok, but even then is there really that much inter team communication that a forum on every site is necessary. I've been having this argument with my team captain for the past 2 years, our team is a maximum of 10 people a couple of which actually work, I do not see the reason of wasting time and resources on coding interfaces with a database so that 5 people can post messages. Is it not more direct to just instant message a person, those get my attention faster than a forum on my website.

Yes, there are other alternatives to using a login system on a website to share information, but many of these require at least one other person. If you want to email, text, or call someone else to get information, what if that person is sick, at school/work, or on vacation? You're out of luck.

Right now I am totally redoing my team's website to use MySQL databases with a custom-built Content Management System. Up until this past season, I didn't really need a CMS, as I did everything in just plain XHTML and CSS. But when I wanted to change the layout and style of the website for the 2006 season, it took me six weeks - working for several hours a day - to update a majority of the pages. (Google says it found 372 pages on team228.org, excluding the forums and any PDFs it cached. So yeah, updating that took quite a while. )

So for my team, our new 2007 site will have a login system to ease the content management. When I want to add a new photo gallery, it will be a lot easier to just FTP up the images, and add all the info to the database, and let the PHP-backend do all the work of creating the photo gallery. If I want to add a new news article to the homepage, it will be as easy as posting this message to ChiefDelphi.

So that's my main reason for switching over to a database-driven "login system". It's not to impress judges, it's to ease my workload so I can get even more content online faster during the time-constricted build season, because other things like finishing the robot before ship date carry more weight.

I've been ripping on you guys a bit, feel free to rip my site to shreds if you'd like. http://www.wolvcatrobotics.com

Calm down, we're not here to "rip your site to shreds".

ChiefDelphi is a wonderful resource to share information and knowledge while having a good discussion, not to rip one's ideas to shreds or start flame wars.

[ThomasP]

Originally Posted by Ricky2443

I've been ripping on you guys a bit, feel free to rip my site to shreds if you'd like. http://www.wolvcatrobotics.com

Your site actually pulls off the blue and yellow color scheme rather well, I remember someone was talking about it on the black background thread.

But yea, if you only have 10 members it's not that bad. We have around 50 members on our team and not many that are capable of updating a complex website and I had to keep that in mind when writing ours. So, I made logins, created access levels, etc and made it possible to administrate/moderate/use the whole website without having to touch FTP/MySQL.

Yea, I could've wrote some scripts and secured stuff with .htaccess but it's a LOT more user-friendly to just build logins into the site.

If you'd like to check out our site and give some constructive criticism, feel free http://www.blarglefish.com ^_^