Managing Guests and Members

[jpzeal]

I'd like to know whether there are any functions or any code which will help me to monitor and control, Guests and members on a site.
I am trying to write a program which does that.
I am also be intrested in calculating no of hits to the site etc.

[Spudhead]

The most useful object in managing users is the Session (http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/asp/quickref/session.html). It (as a rule of thumb) lasts for the length of a user's visit to the site, and can be used to control their access rights, store data over a progression of pages, and many other useful tasks. If you'd like to ask any more specific questions about this in relation to what you're trying to do, post back and we'l see what we can work out.

Tracking hits can be quite a large topic, let us know what info you'd like to see/save and we can discuss options.

[Bullschmidt]

Perhaps have a login page that asks the user for his username and password. And whatever page that posts to (which could be the same page for a self posting form) tests these fields against what is in the database, sets the username and userlevel (perhaps Guest or Member or Admin) session variables accordingly, and then redirects to the proper page - i.e. back to the login page if the password is wrong (perhaps with a JavaScript popup saying wrong username/password combination) or to the main menu page if the password is correct.

And a free tracker can be had at http://www.extreme-dm.com

[jpzeal]

Thanx for u r replies.
I want to build a forum, I want to manage guests n members and keep track of them in the forum. I'm just doing it for the sake of some practice, so I'd like to keep it simple.