Dear sparkling community,
among other things, I offer online courses via elopage with lifelong access to the information like videos, PDFs, textfiles etc. uploaded there. Therefore I have to pay a monthly subscription fee to elopage.
I heard that WordPress offers this with a feature called members’ area and I wonder, whether there is something similar in sparkle? Or maybe anyone has an idea for a workaround…?
Thanks a lot and sunny greetings, c.
Hello Carola.
I think sparkle can not do this with onboard tools. You might need a PHP script you can find here:
Zenk’s Script Archiv
It is all in german 
Mr. F.
I use a script for this type of function. The one I use frequently is THIS one. It isn’t free, it’s about $29 for a standard licence, but it does most things that you will most likely need. It allows users to self-register, with or without payment, (PayPal and stripe as standard) The script allows for a variety of uses, including membership groups (maybe specific courses in your case) as well as protected downloads that can be made available to all, some or individual groups, and even individual members. I suggest you take a look at the demo site and the demo admin area at the above link to better understand all the features.
The script itself is installed as a web application on your server and uses PHP and MySQL. It’s simple to set up, but if you need help, the developers will install it for you. Once installed, adding the various bits and pieces to your Sparkle site is a breeze. All the code you need to add to your pages is accessed through the administration area. This is simply copied and pasted into embed widgets in your Sparkle page. In fact, Sparkle is my “go-to” application for creating membership areas using this script - even if the client is using a different platform (such as wordpress, or other website development applications). Essentially, it creates a website within a website that is easy to back-up and maintain independently of a main site. It’s well worth the small fee if you need a full blown members area for your website. A developer licence is available at a higher cost if you want to use the script on several websites.
@Carola , the members area in Wordpress site is probably a protected area that is built in to the template. Sparkle is only the tool for creating the web pages. It does not have anything to add in a protected area.
Not sure of the type of protection you need for your extra files. If you only need a single password for a directory with all of protected files you can add this to most hosted sites free of charge. You mentioned lifetime access, so I will assume the access will be stable. You would need to have access to the cpanel and enable the directory protection on a folder. You can refer to : https://www.dummies.com/web-design-development/web-hosting/how-to-protect-web-hosted-folders-with-passwords/ .
An example of this working is access to this pdf document. I added a members directory and dropped the pdf in the folder. All documents in the folder would be protected. Here is a link: https://www.mobiledataconnected.com/members/membersdoc.pdf you will be prompted with a login. Enter in user: test pw: test123
I would not recommend this if the login info needs to change. It would also be free as it is part of most hosting setups.
If you need better control and have separate users that you want to control access, that would require a fair bit more work probably beyond this discussion.