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i am using visual studio 2010 and have created a website for a client. the problem i am having, other than enabling flash video playback which i am researching, is how to make the user accounts expire after a year. he wants users to pay for a year subscription to the website to access the videos, but i can't figure out how to make them good for only a year. and as an aside, if i could make the videos "self-destruct" after 48 hours when downloaded, that would be great. thanx in advance to all.
Is this a visual basic.net application or perhaps an asp.net application? If it's an asp.net application it's in the wrong forum in which you should PM a moderator.
honestly, i don't know. i know that i am using visual studio 2010, and the code i write on the pages is visual basic, however, it could be an asp.net site. how on earth do i tell? the default page says default.aspx, i would think that means it is an asp.net site, but when i started it, i chose blank website, not asp.net website. would that make a difference? what is the criteria for making a website a visual basic site as opposed to an asp.net site? this website crap has me confused, i can code in visual basic, python, basic and a little c++. when it comes to websites, i am totally lost. it seems i should start saying "no, i can't do that" instead of "yes, i can do that" and trying to figure it out.
Yeah, that's a asp.net application. What I'll do is report the thread to a moderator for you so that they can move it to the appropriate sub-forum. They have people that just specialize in asp.net that will help you out so much more than what I can ;]
Thread moved to the 'ASP.Net' forum, which is where questions about .Net web pages/sites belong
(thanks for letting us know dday9 :thumb: )
No you cannot make the video self destruct on the client. Don't even try it.
You can expire the video, however, on an account. Take it off the server for that user. Of course chances are that the user have already downloaded the video to his/her's account and is laughing at your attempt right this moment.
Now.You need to expire an account. This has two paths.
One path is if you use and manipulate the asp.net membership system - database. You can check the date the account created when the user logs in or by using a service on the server and if a year has passed you can set the IsApproved column of the asp_Membership table to false, so the user cannot log in. You can delete the user but it's a little tricky so i suggest you don't try that, unless you know what you are doing because you can mess up other accounts as well.
Second path is to create your own membership database. If you choose that, i suggest you ask help to the vb.net forum(you will probably get more answers) and then adapt the database to a web server.
Also for the love of everything DO NOT use an access database for your task.
thank you for the advice, i think i'll write a script to run on the server to check the dates and disable them. i hadn't thought of that, i'm too deep into the thing right now. i'm not very good at this, still new. it's all the little things, like making the control boxes centered, or making a flash video play, etc. that are driving me insane. i had the basic site up in about two days, but the devil's in the details. it's not up yet, but i have about two weeks before he gets the videos done, so i have plenty of time. since it's going to basically be a subscription, i don't want to delete any accounts, they may want to renew later. i was thinking of the self-destruct more along the lines of disabling. maybe check the time on the downloaded machine and when 48 hours are up, it deletes a header or something. maybe i can write something and sell it to blockbuster or netflix, or you can have it if you want. it'll take me a year at this point to write it.
Well the whole point of internet is sharing, not disabling. Anyhow you cannot interfere with the user machine to disable a video unless you persuade them to install some software on their machine that will interact with the web site. This would be very difficult to make, probably considered a virus and personally i would never installed it no matter what. It enough that we have to leave with flash, i don't need more stuff on my computer.
Ye making the CSS is also difficult for me, as i am not very good at design so it is good that you have extra days.
P.S. Thanks for the offer but i think youtube has driven away any kind of similar project.
P.S.2 If your customer views videos on your site then you can, kinda, secure the video by not providing a download button. That way you can disable the video on the clients account and that would be very easy to do (one true - false on an sql row). Of course most of the people will figure out that they can download a video very easy but i had a couple of people recently, asking me how they can download a flash video, so probably some people still don't know the basics. Or you can provide them with updates - sequences of your videos that they must pay extra to have available.Anyhow i don't know exactly what the web site is for so i am just brainstorming...
thank you for the assistance. it is a dog training site. the guy is going to have teasers, short videos, to entice people to subscribe to the site. for $99, you get a year subscription, which gives you full access to the full length videos, as well as the question section where he answers questions. kind of like support for the videos like software. most sites sell videos for $50-70 for a dvd delivered, with no question section, so i think it's a great idea. he is going to be adding videos regularly, so the subscription would be well worth it. he was wondering about disabling the videos after 2 days to keep people renewing their subscriptions. that way, you could download it (once you figure out how, no buttons provided) and after 2 days, they would be rendered unplayable, to keep people from redistributing them. it seems like you could place a script inside the video to check the date on the computer before it runs and maybe even tells the computer to not play it or something like that. it would be easy for a technical person to remove the script, and it would not add too much overhead to the video, and require no installation on the customer's computer. that's something that i can come up with anytime, the price i'm getting for the website just covers getting the site up and working. if i come up with that script, i can put it into the videos anytime.
as far as people not knowing how to download flash videos, i am continually surprised at how technically illiterate most people actually are. i just mainly want to get the site up and running, and you have helped tremendously. thank you.
Well if you put a script inside the video then you can implement the "disabled" video action. The only problem would be that the video will be disable from the first second it starts playing and not after 2 days. Meaning, get over that idea, it's more trouble than it's worth.
maybe that's why it's not being done? i can see some immediate obstacles, the first being i'm not much of a programmer and the second i know nothing about the structure of the videos. anyway, thanx for the help with the user accounts, that is a must have.
No problem.
P.S. The video thing is been done, meaning you can place additional hidden code inside a video but you need an external "stimuli" to energize the video. I cannot help on doing this because it's a basic principle of a virus, so unless you want the site owner to get sued (at least in US) you shouldn't be doing any videos like that. I've done the above in pictures, i must admit, a long time ago and for research purposes in C or C++ , can't remember now. No idea if it can be done with C# or VB.
I think you're coming at the disabling the video issue in the wrong way. Don't download it, stream it. That way there's nothing on the customer's PC to disable and instead you have control over it's accessability on the server which is going to be much easier. Yes, it's possible to record a streamed video but most people (including myself, incidentally) don't know how and aren't going to be bothered to find out. If it's a dog training web site your customers, on the whole, are not going to be techies.
excellent idea, thank you so much. i think that is what i was moving toward, the solution i came up with forces me to store the video in four different formats to ensure that all users can see it. at least that is the info i am getting from the internet. i haven't actually got one up yet to test, but from what i have read, it should be streamed. i know there used to be add-ins that let you record youtube videos or any cached videos, but haven't looked for anything like that in years. i am going to just leave that alone for now, the number of people who are going to do this would not really affect his profits. thank you for the suggestion.