Bit of Advice Please

[aspire]

Hello,

I am seriously considering the purchase of Photopost Pro for the construction of a photographers and models forum and image posting facility.

I do have very limited website construction knowledge. i.e. have built very basic sites with the aide of MS 'frontpage' but photopost on an initial inspection of its features may seem ideal for my requirement.

The concept behind this new site is a well used one of creating a community of its members for networking (sites that are established and do this well under close moderator control often do very well)

OK.... A few questions please.

(1) Security.

Unfortunately sites of this type are often a target to be hacked with total mayhem left behind. What are the best safeguards to help prevent this. I realise that regular daily backups must be taken, but as the saying goes "Prevention is much preferable to a cure" (I do understand that a site that allows individuals to post images and comments externally by its very nature is 'open')

(2) Is it possible to have member types. in this site proposed will be;- e.g. Photographer accounts, Model accounts, Studio owner accounts, Stylist accounts, etc, etc.

(3) Construction procedure.

Do I purchase the required domain name 1st then purchase Photopost and pay for the optional installation before or after i have configured and altered the templates. Whats the best order to do things in regarding the uploading of the site.

(4) What is the best ways of dealing with 'Trolls' and Can I block certain IP addresses and ranges.

(5) Am I best to purchase an additional hard drive for my PC that is solely for the use of Photopost and its backups.

(6) Am I purchasing the best package for 'my' requirements.? The one of the sites that I wish to emulate is one in the style of (example) www.net-model.com

That's enough for now, and thanks in advance.

(If I purchase I have the feeling you will be seeing a lot more of me in these pages in the following weeks. )

[Chuck S]

1. Our application has no open security issues that we are aware of. In fact to my knowledge we are the only gallery application I know of that has actually had an independent security company audit our software for us and give feedback

2. You can setup unlimited usergroups to move users into.

3. I suggest you purchase your domain name and hosting account. Then you purchase photopost and an installation and then after we install you can play with templates etc

4. You can move users into a banned usergroup should a specific user give you trouble. There is no specific IP ban in our standalone product but if you integrate with certain forums they have this functionality

5. This all depends on what your doing is your computer going to be your website?

6. That is a windows application not Photopost but our product like that one is a photo gallery. we have tons of example sites here

http://www.photopost.com/auth.html

[aspire]

Originally Posted by Chuck S

4. You can move users into a banned usergroup should a specific user give you trouble. There is no specific IP ban in our standalone product but if you integrate with certain forums they have this functionality

Are forums an integral part of photopost or do they have to be purchased and integrated separatly.??

[Chuck S]

They are seperate things. You can purchase them separate and there are even free ones available

You can see what forums we support by reading the sticky in this very forum

[aspire]

Thank you for your assistance so far.

The template for the forum that we are using for this thread seems ideal and very user friendly with all the features that would be required. Where could this one be obtained from.

Once again, many thanks.

[aspire]

test:- sorry messed up

[Chuck S]

we use vbulletin here

http://www.vbulletin.com/order/

[aspire]

Is it a relatively simple task to integrate forums into Photoposts page so that it appears actually on the front page with the latest posts.

Is it also a simple task to integrate the members sign-in process so they only have to do it once and not for both images and forums.

Am I being quite naive here in presuming this to be a quite simple procedure.?

[Chuck S]

The forum does not show on photopost. Just the header footer and stylesheet of vb

Integration with one login happens when you install with vb3 integration

[aspire]

Is it best to set up the forums first or Photopost and then import the forums into it.

[Chuck S]

You setup the forum and then install photopost since your essentially integrating photopost with the forum login it must exist before