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View Full Version : Trying to setup user database on website



mojomike
January 20th, 2008, 04:10 PM
Hi all,

I've got a website that I'm trying to improve on by setting up a user profile and database system.
I'm probably using incorrect terminology, so I'll try to explain what I want to do.
Before I go on, I'll explain that I probably know my way around webdesign well enough to get myself into trouble. HTML's no problem, and I can take someone else's scripts and incorporate them on my page pretty well (usually), but the actual programming behind dynamic sites scares the Cr@p out of me.

Currently, I have an email list and email campaign going using GoDaddy's Express Email feature. I've got a form on my page that the user completes and they are added to the database automatically. Then, I can send email's to the whole list. Nothing fancy.

What I would like to setup is a profile for each user that they can sign into with a username and passwd. Then they can edit the various aspects of their profile and save them.

I would like my email list to be incorporated into this. I'm concerned about this, because if I'm using a service like Godaddy or aweber, how can I merge my form and database with theirs?

I would also eventually like to add a forum to my website, and obviously, it would be best for the forum to use the same usernames and passwds as the user profiles

Finally, I need to be able to download all of this information into my own database on my computer, for which, I'll probably be using OpenOffice (unless someone has a better idea).

Any help anyone could give would be great. I realize this covers a broad spectrum of questions. If there's a good tutorial site that I could look at, that would be cools.
OR, if there's a service that can do all of this, that would be great too. I'm no programmer, I'm more of a businessman. I just need a working website to do what I need it to do.

Thanks for all your help and guidance.

pmasiar
January 20th, 2008, 04:46 PM
Mailman is excellent web-based email list manager, and Free.

I am not sure which one but I bet there should be one of the dozens of forum systems which has email list manager integrated. It might be not Free/open source tho.

If you want to download the database, best would be to use exactly the same database forum (from above) uses, most likely it would be MySQL. OpenOffice is good, but for personal use.