We're on GitHub
QuickerSite is available on GitHub as from 2020.
You may want to star, fork, follow, download and/or contribute to the project over there. Thank you!
My development rage is running at cruising speed. You can read everything about it on https://asplite.com/
Demo: https://demo.asplite.com/
Download: https://github.com/PieterCooreman/aspLite
Always happy with some feedback or a bug report.
For some weeks now I'm on a crazy development trip. It's really serious. Terrifying. Ever since this Covid crisis I'm basically doing nothing but code my way through numerous ideas and issues. Day by day. From the moment I wake up, I start making to do lists from everything I've been thinking of during the night. I remember I went to the exact same thing when I developed QS, back in 2007-2008. I haven't changed a bit apparently.
And yes, it's all about ASP/VBScript. I am developing a new framework: https://github.com/PieterCooreman/ASP-VBScript-Framework. How stupid is that??? It's incredibly stupid. But I like it so much.
This thing needs a name... Can't think of anything.
My development trip sure has been given an amazing boost by GitHub. GitHub has made me feel comfortable as a developer again. It takes care of versioning, keeps track of the history of scripts, releases, etc. GitHub Desktop helps a lot to synchronize my local development environment with the online repository. I discovered "Markdown" as an easy way to write release notes and documentation. Anyway, GitHub adds a lot of professionalism. And I need that.
GitHub also serves as a basic free CMS: https://pietercooreman.github.io/ASP-VBScript-Framework/.This "projectpage" lists all Markdown (.md) files in a given branch. You can select a template (basic). That page gets automatically updated when I write documentation in my Markdown files. In theory, a GitHub repository can be *just* a bunch of Markdown files - thus a simple website. And it has SSL. See https://pages.github.com/
ALL FOR FREE...
I'm waiting for a contributor to jump-in on any of my repositories. I have 8 of them. So far, nobody has presented him/herself as a contributor. But I understand. I'm on such an intense trip that I would not be able to cooperate with anyone anyhow.
Programming is a very very very lonely business after all. I really think it is. Pretty much like writing songs is. It's me, myself and I. But that does not mean getting input and feedback from others is not important. It usually drives the developer towards even better results.
Happy programming!
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (02/04/2020 20:34:18)Now get a Slack account, and get another tool professional coders use... I have self discussions on it on a daily basis, in my Wordspace, but also use it to have direct live discussions with the actual team that develops WP...
But mainly, because I use 3 different computers, I use it as a central place to hold files, notes, tasks to do etc... without worrying about computer synchronization. It's awesome until your stupid expensive router goes out, which it did yesterday, so I ended up going out there and buying a new one (what, you thought Covid19 would stop me from having wifi)?
P.S. If you don't hear from me again, it means that the virus got me,... see you on the other side..., probably downstairs, not upstairs ! - Pieter says: (03/04/2020 14:54:14)Even if the virus hit you, you'll make it through this Nick. Stay home safe though. The closest it got to me so far is my brother. He's working in a hospital and he appeared to be wearing rubbish masks. He is not sick at all, barely shows symptoms, but he has to stay home obviously.
I named the thing aspLite. Check out https://asplite.com
I host asplite.com (Mobirise) on Github Pages. It includes an SSL on my own domain. For free. The files are stored in my repository and if you download the GitHub aspLite repository, it also includes the entire asplite.com website. That opens up opportunities especially when documentation would get more extended in the coming months.
To me this appears to be some sort of "Holy Grail". I can host ad-free html/css/js (only) websites on GitHub for free (1 website per repository). Limited to 1GB/site. This is a perfect match with tools like Mobirise. I will further explore this in the coming days/weeks. - Pieter says: (03/04/2020 15:56:56)Updates:
1. not only you can host an SSL certified 1GB website on your own domain for FREE, you can also make use of the built-in historization and versioning of GitHub. So you can not only easily revert your websites back to any given moment in the past, you can also label them as "Releases".
2. When using tools like Mobirise, where you need the project.mobirise files in the root, it's now easy to cooperate with your customers. Versioning conflicts will be sorted out automagically by GitHub.
3. Anyone (including your customers) can use the Issue tracker to report issues with a given website, or do Pull requests when he/she faces bugs. Via "Insights" you have website visitor statistics.
Oh man... I TOLD you I was on a trip. Microsoft owns GitHub. So I hope one day this aspLite project will come to their attention.
Weird times. As a father, I love being stuck with the children. As a developer, I love having time on my hands to focus on new technologies and learn new things. As a musician, I love the silence around me. But people are getting infected and are dying at a rapid pace. Very ambiguous.
For some time now, JavaScript seems to be the most popular programming language on the globe. I've recently created a GitHub account and when browsing the most starred repositories, they're basically all about JavaScript. Often combined in HTML and CSS frameworks. React, Vue, Next, Electron, Node, Angular, Three, jQuery, Reveal, Atom, etc...The list is endless actually. A little too long to my taste maybe... Anyway, one thing is very clear: any JavaScript-app will work in all current browsers, from the smallest mobile phone to the biggest desktop computers. No doubt about that.
Bootstrap is still doing very well too. The first version of Bootstrap was released in 2011. That was around the time I stopped the active development of QS. I somehow regret not having adopted Bootstrap for the QS backsite (and some front-end modules). I once added a Bootstrap 3 compatible menu-tag: QS_BOOTSTRAPMENU_3. I guess it still works. But Bootstrap is on version 4 now.
On a side note... Given the popularity of this uncompiled scripting language for both frontend, backend and even mobile app-development, Microsoft could have been much more successful by extending their own (more visual) variant named VBScript, the scripting language that is most often used in ASP classic code. That is... instead of creating their bloated .net monsters. Have I said that before?
So it looks like it's the perfect time to learn how to write good JavaScript code. On GitHub you can find some "repositories" that collect all sorts of ebooks and tutorials. THE most starred repository is freeCodeCamp - a full academic curriculum mainly on JavaScript, including various certifications. All for free.
Keep it safe out there. Or better... stay inside!
Time has come to realize that QuickerSite has come to an end. Active development stopped somewhere in 2014 already. I will keep on hosting QuickerSites for my customers as well as for some resellers.
This is a tough decision, but it feels like the right thing to do. I have finally made up my mind about offering hosted services only, rather than freely redistribute and support codebases that need updates and patches on a regular basis.
This website QuickerSite.com, the forums and some other functions will be available for many years to come. Existing users can always contact me on info@quickersite.com to receive the latest version of QS or discuss any issue. I will no longer offer the QuickerSite-codebase to new users however as from February 2020.
This has been a wonderful adventure and as is often the case, the most important thing that remains is friendship. Thank y’all for this wonderful time.
Take care!
Pieter Cooreman
developer QuickerSite
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (22/01/2020 22:25:15)QuickerSite will always have a special place in my heart. It was the first serious CMS I started using. The best thing about this project however, is that I made lifelong friends because of it...
RIP QS !
- hughw says: (24/01/2020 20:01:06)Just a little thank you Pieter for having created such a great CMS in the first place and for being there when I needed you (not that I ever had to call on you very often, because QS is so solid!).
Not only that, but how many CMS developers also sing to us so well? I shall miss that!
I'll be keeping my QS site going for a while yet (still using ASP a lot for our own projects) but I fully understand your decision to draw a line under the mighty QuickerSite.
Thanks once again.
Hugh - David says: (25/01/2020 14:59:40)I can only mirror the sentiment already posted, sad to see the end of Quickersite but glad to have made so many quicker friends. Good that you will continue support for existing customers, I have a few still running QS.
Pieter, if you had the opportunity to go back in time and do it all over, would you and what would you do (if anything) differently? - Pieter says: (29/01/2020 17:54:46)Thanks guys. One day I write a song about QS
The main reason for taking QS offline is simply because there are far more better CMS solutions today, for both small and big sites. No, I’m not gonna name WordPress.
By the time I started my web development career, ASP/VBScript was rapidly growing and I managed to develop quite a few interesting large web applications. Most of them are still around. That's how I got the idea of developing QS, as a compilation of all the scripts and classes I had been collecting over the years. Big chunks of QuickerSite-code were written back in 1999-2002. I only released the first version of QS in 2006.
To answer your question David, I don't really regret anything as far as QS itself is concerned. If today I would do it again, I would stay away from Windows Servers and choose PHP or JavaScript instead. By the time QS was stable and secure (2009-2012) there were not enough experienced ASP/VBScript developers left who could have contributed to the project. That is the main reason for QS not to take off as it could or should have. And me being completely unable to delegate the developing part...mainly because of my fear for performance and security issues. That's exactly what WP always suffered from (and probably always will). Especially when using lots of (outdated) plugins....
I recently discovered a neat trick in Google Photos. I needed an easy way to isolate and upload 1000's of photos and movies that were stored on old disk drives (they were about to crash). I found out that the easiest way to do that, is to search for *.jpg of *.mp4 files by using Windows search, and next drag and drop these results into the Google Photos webpage (the one with the overview of your photos). Make sure to use Chrome. You can easily upload 10.000 images/movies in one go. It may take a while to upload that many files, but it sure is worthwhile.
Update 1: forget about the "search for" trick I mentioned above. In fact, it's even much easier: just drag 'n drop a complete folder or even a complete disk drive in the Google Photos webpage. This will automatically upload all images and movies (and not the other files). I uploaded over 30.000 images and movies in the past 48 hours this way. Amazing.
Update 2: Apple users would typically use the Pictures app to sync their photos accross various devices and integrate with iCloud. However, they only have 5GB free storage wich is not much when dealing with images and movies. They then need to buy an online storage plan for a monthly fee. Google photos could be a solution for them as well. You need to export pictures from the Pictures app before uploading though. That's a little inconvenient...
Immediately after your upload, Google will automatically sort the uploaded material by day, month and year. The hours and days that follow, you'll get dozens of suggested collages, animations, movies and styled images. Wonderful. Also, Google will automatically remove double uploads. Very useful. And with the built-in face-recognition you can easily see yourself growing older and uglier year after year. That's a minus. There are also very useful search-capabilities. If you're looking for a guitar, just search for "guitar" and all images with a guitar will show up. You can also combine keywords in your searches, as well as people's names. Very powerful. For instance, a search for "Pieter drinking beer" returns these images that I turned into a collage for the occasion:
(actually, on 2 pictures, it's not me drinking beer, it's my brother and sis... )
Another example, this comes up when searching for all firstnames of my family.. Google finds all our family-pictures taken over the years. There were many more, but I made a collage again. All I had to do to get this going, is tag my family members on a handful of photos (few days ago). Google did the rest. I would never have been able to find them myself in my collection of 50.000 photos.
Above all... it's all 100% free. The only "limitation" is that Google reduces photo's to 16MP and movies to 1080p. These are not even limitations... You really don't need a paid solution to store and backup images and movies these days. At least....
How about privacy? What if Google suspends my account? I'm less worried about privacy. I have not one single photo that I need to hide from the outside world (except the ones where I drink beer perhaps). I am more worried about Google suspending my account for some reason. Or what if Google simply disappears at some point? I will then lose all my pictures, movies and memories.
Thinking about this ... maybe it's a good idea to store everything on a local disk somewhere as well...
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (04/01/2020 17:23:11)1. I had never used Google photos until I read this post. After playing around..., it is exactly how you said... just make sure not to load original photos, let Google resize them down to 16MP ??? so it won't count against your Google disk quota, which for me is 15GB.
2. I did not know, and I just realized that you (Pieter) and my mom had shared family and vacation images with me though the service through the years - what really scares me is that my 75 year old mother knows and uses Google photos more than I do !!!
Thanks for sharing Pieter and happy new year !!! - Pieter says: (04/01/2020 18:04:01)LOL
Happy New Year Nick!
Exactly, there are tons of other options, like editing, apply filters, sharing, create albums, you can even order old fashioned photo books. You can also comment and like each others foto's. You can also have partner accounts. They have full access to your library.
Actually, I'm using Google Photos for some years already. Just started to take it more serious now that I have basically all pictures and movies on there.
And with my smartphone I can stream everything to any 4K smart TV. Amazing. - Pieter says: (07/01/2020 18:40:28)Thinking this through.... I noticed that I only have digital images of the last 15 years of my life. I'm 47 now. So basically, the first 30 years of my life are "gone" without any trace of them in pictures or movies. At least, very few...
This has obviously everything to do with the rise of smartphones. I think one can hardly underestimate the importance and impact smartphones have in our every day life. Also, as this is currently going on, it's very hard to even understand the consequences or predict what the future will bring. Smartphones feed our narcissistic nature, for sure, and Facebook - and especially Instagram - are abusing this sad reality.
Another thing that comes to my mind when browsing the past 15 years of my life, is that images have become extremely precise and year by year their quality drastically increases. Even today, with every release of yet another iPhone or Samsung, things are getting more sensational and sophisticated. And these images will last a lifetime. They will not loose color over the years. They are there to stay. And yet, there has never been more fake news all over the media and people never felt more like "filtering" these pixelperfect images. As if they just can't handle the truth.
For my kids - they are 16, 14 and 9 years old, the situation will be even different. Every moment of their lives - from the day they were born till they day they will die - will be locked into 1000's of images and movies. What will be the consequence of having all these memories at your fingertips, one or two swipes away? Difficult to say.
As for me, one thing's clear: as I took at least a kilo/year, I need to loose weight. Big time.
I have recently been (re)doing some sites.
https://www.schoonheidsinstituutveerle.be/
Actually, the first one is a QS on a Mobirise template. The 3 others are pure Mobirise, nothing to do with QS. I recently bought myself a copy of Mobirise. It's an amazing simple little tool that creates great sites... I'm using it for some years already and I must admit it has grown to a very mature state. Especially when you combine it with some custom JS, CSS and/or iFrames, the sky is the limit.
It's a sad day for QS. Today, I have given the installation ZIP files a try. It was a major shock to find out that none of the downloads (the regular QS nor the Mobirise edition) actually worked. They caused an error when installing.
I have meantime fixed the issue. But I have absolutely no idea how many people must have tried to download and install QS, without any luck. It may have been going on for more than a year. And nobody has ever reported any issue.
It somehow makes sadly clear how dead QS is today. I'm not blaming anyone, let me make that clear. It's just sad. That's all there is to say I guess.
- David says: (11/12/2019 02:40:38)Not necessarily Pieter, I for one only download a fresh copy if you've either announced a new version or patched the current version. I keep an unzipped customised copy on my server drive ready to deploy, only takes a couple of minutes that way.
- Sergio says: (11/12/2019 08:59:39)Pieter on May 6th I reported you a problem downloading the zip file, and I wanted to tell you that on that date the installation worked for me (Regular QS).
...
> Hi Pieter,
> for your information:
> I downloaded QS (current release) but the zip file is corrupt.
> I don't know if it's my problem or zip file on the server is corrupt.
> Sergio
... - Pieter says: (11/12/2019 09:11:30)Sergio, the issue did not relate to file corruption. I think it has to do with a Windows update that has affected the ASP opens Access databases. The issue only showed when installing QS, on the screen where you set some initial stuff, like sitename, url, password, etc. Hitting the "Save" button on that page generated a 500 error message: Record is deleted. It's database related. Again, I have no idea when exaclty that issue starting to show. Nobody ever reported it. Anyway, it's fixed now...
"It is important in life not to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once. If you want something in life, reach out and grab it."
I'm quoting Christopher McCandless - the man from Into The Wild. For some odd reason, his story only came to my attention today, after yet another adventurer died when searching for the Magic Bus in Alaska.
For most people, measuring yourself, "reaching out and grab it", would typically mean: get a decent job, make a lot of money, raise the kids, freak out on weekends and keep yourself in good shape by working out. And last but not least: live a fake second life on Facebook.
But for me, these couple of words mean something else. I can relate to McCandless's story. I feel like I have not yet measured myself to the bone. I always feel like the best is yet to come. For some years now I have tried to make it as a singer-songwriter and as such I have often tried to reach out and grab something. But I've never known what there really is to grab, other than expressing myself through my songs, my guitar, the lyrics and my voice.
But I'm 47 years old. And I fear that my best years are behind me. It's a sad feeling. And I know that this is the case for most people. But still...
Developing QuickerSite back in 2006-2014 sure also felt like reaching out. But I didn't grab anything with it ;) Story of my life.
I was told years ago to never run real time virus protection software on Windows Servers. They would slow down the whole thing, especially when lots of file I/O is done. Like is the case when using Access databases in classic ASP web applications. But WordPress also seems to generate a lot of disk i/o, more than what I had expected.
I noticed that on my AWS server, by default, real time virus protection (known as Defender by Windows users) is switched on. So I took the challenge and checked out the difference in loading speed of my hosted websites with and without Defender switched on. The difference is ... massive.
With Defender switched off, websites load up to 70% faster. Good to know I think... I bet there are better virus scanners than Defender for Windows... but they all cost a fortune. Not sure they're worth it... I better stick to a good backup plan in case a virus hits.
It's amazing how Mobirise keeps on coming up with things I added to QS years ago. Check out https://mobirise.com/extensions/popup-builder/
Their next big thing would obviously be a way to provide content behind passwords. This can be done with just JavaScript. Mobirise *could* encrypt html that can only be decrypted with a given password. This library seems to do the trick. This solution comes nowhere near the QuickerSite intranet area, but in many cases that is not needed.
SendGrid turns out to be a working solution for sending out emails in QuickerSite. The settings below (/asp/config/web_config.asp) work fine for me. You have to signup and create an API key. Finally, use the password for that API key. You can send up to 100 messages/day for free.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (18/05/2019 17:47:55)I'm not sure if Mailchimp is a working solution for QS, and I'm sure it is... last time I checked, you could send 12,000 emails per month for free.
Using third party email sending services are a must especially if you used shared hosting. Even if you have done nothing wrong, one of the other of the thousands of sites on the same server could be a spammer, and your domain will end up swooped up and flagged as a spammer. This solution, and Mailchimp's solution are the best way to mitigate the issue. - Pieter says: (21/05/2019 08:37:01)hi Nick, Mailchimp has a sideproduct called Mandrill for this purpose. But at first sight, it's more expensive than SendGrid.
Google also refers to SendGrid: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/sending-mail/using-sendgrid
Google Cloud customers have to integrate with something like SendGrid, as Google blocks port 25 to send emails.
UPDATE: it turns out that AWS as well throttles port 25 in case many emails are sent at once (like is usually the case when sending out newsletters). You can ask AWS support to lift that throttle though...
A while back I was very excited about Google Cloud. Remember? Well, it’s over. Google Cloud Servers block outgoing port 25, meaning that you cannot run an SMTP service on that port. So there is absolutely no way to host websites (with contact forms, or any other forms) on a Google Cloud server. Exit Google Cloud.
So I had to go find another solution. I decided to give Amazon Web Services a try. Check out https://aws.amazon.com/
So far so good. I’m very impressed. Things are a bit more complex coming from Google Cloud, but that has its reasons. AWS has a longer tradition in cloud hosting. It feels like they have been thinking a lot about it over the years. They do cloud hosting the object oriënted way... Sort of.
Some things to keep in mind when using AWS:
- Make sure to use one the datacenters that has AWS backup available. At this time it’s only available to 4 of the many datacenters they have. I choose Ireland.
- You can make use of their so called “Free Tier” offers. That basically means you pay nothing in the first 12 months. Google has something similar. You can have a Windows 2019 with 30GB of disk space and 1GB of RAM for free… That sounds like a ridiculously small server, but believe me, it works very well. You can easily host up to 30 (small) QuickerSites on such an instance. Not bad at all. After the free period has expired, that server would only cost at around 15€/month. Not bad either. And of course, you can easily upgrade that machine with more CPU, RAM and disk space any time.
- The AWS backup solution fully automates the creation of snapshots (backups) at very low rates. Very useful, but again, only available to a handful of their datacenters…
- Getting started with such an AWS instance requires some in-depth understanding of how firewalls work, how to install IIS, an SMTP server, assign IP addresses, and many other things… Sometimes I feel like it’s too much for my small brains. But I managed to get it up and running rather quickly. I amazed myself.
- It’s good to know that QuickerSite works – without a single problem – on the latest Windows 2019 Server. It’s funny to read how some ASP.NET applications are stuck with IIS 6 or 7 due to lacking support for older ASP.NET versions on the newer IIS releases. Véééry funny actually. I can tell for sure that QuickerSite runs on - hold on - Windows 2000 (IIS5), 2003 (IIS6), 2008 (IIS7), 2012 (IIS8), 2016 (IIS10) and 2019 (also IIS10 - huh? they forgot to make it 11 I guess) servers. Bam...
All in all, I think AWS is a very interesting way to go. I will make up my mind about it very soon.
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (20/03/2019 22:19:11)Interesting topic, which leads me to one question:
By choosing Ireland, while your business is in another country - Belgium, isn't that going to affect your SEO, or even worse, maybe even getting blackballed (flagged as suspicious) in the future?
Things are getting more complicated all around...
On another note, I'm playing with NicePage (thanks to Pieter's generosity). It is one of the better page builders I've used, and I have usedover 10-15 of them through the years, and I almost bought a full pledge license myself. What stopped me? It is very buggy. Very often, what you design in the backsite, is not exactly displayed on the front end (WordPress plugin-wise). But what really cooled me off was the fact that initially it did not add any page load times, but after an update about 2 weeks ago, it started adding about 0.4 - 0.5 seconds per page load. Now, CMS's like QS do not have that many choices for a page builder (Mobirise and NicePage) only come to mind. In WordPress there are dozens of options to choose, so the cost, bugs, and load times does not make NicePage worth while. Add the fact that if their server goes down, you can't even edit anything, NicePage makes it a very risky proposition to be used in a serious business environment. I have not experienced any outages yet, but many have reported in the Themler forums, some that lasted 2-3 days, and my guess is that they are using the same servers. Also, many of the bugs are around responsive issues, and their answer to those is to turn the "responsive problematic items" off for the smaller devices - not good enough. NicePage is work in progress, but I have no trust in the company behind it. They started with Artisteer, run into problems, and started themler, run into issues there, and now started NicePage. How long will this last before they abandon it and started something new?
Sorry to sort of hijacking your topic Pieter... - Pieter says: (20/03/2019 22:39:47)Nick, nearly half of the sites I host are for UK customers. Well, even though Ireland and the UK are often fighting eachother, I don't think this will affect SEO. Actually, I am an SEO non-believer. Create a Google business and make sure to have lots of photo's for it, and a Google map entry. Try to get some true and useful Google reviews. It's the best SEO you can have...
Nicepage is an amazing software. But I would never use it with WP. Actually I would never use WP. Seriously though, I would never want to rely on a 3rd party for any module, other than Google web fonts or CDN.
Nicepage also exports *just* flat html/css-only websites. Those are very interesting and could be used as templates in QuickerSite. But I have given up on that for now. I decided to focus on www.jstemplates.com. Actually, YOU told me to do so, and you were right. It was worth it. JStemplates is currently hosted on a free Amazon server in Ireland btw ;) On a free SSL certificate by Let's Encrypt. I like free... ;) - Pieter says: (25/03/2019 11:08:50)Nick, now we're at it, I have a couple of questions about NP and WP.
1. In order to use NP in WP, the only thing you have to do is upload a bare-minimal template/plugin to your WP site isn't? You can edit the pages in WP, and things like colors, menu, SEO (etc) in the theme customizer... right?
2. I face a blocking issue: when setting a password for a given page (made with NP) in WP, the page shows without asking for a password... Can you confirm that issue? It's quite annoying obviously. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
3. I really need secure downloads, so that files cannot be downloaded by anonymous visitors or web bots. I need a plugin for that, right? - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/03/2019 17:19:59)1. Almost true... what you can do in the customizer, which is the short name for THEME Customizer, depends what that particular theme is coded to allow you to do, except some of the core features. For example you can set the menus and widgets, but you can only set the colors and SEO if the theme is coded to do so, So each theme has different Customizer screens, and the premium themes over the free ones, obviously will normally have way more controls. My themes will almost reconfigure all aspects of Artisteer, so for small things, like colors, positioning media query breakpoints, you don't need Artisteer to adjust those values, they can be done on the fly.,.
2. I don't have access to Nicepage on this computer, but I will in 3 hours and I will post back then, but I tested on a regular page, and the password pages according to plan - all good.
3. To begin with I would not recommend using password protected pages to push downloads. You will run into some issues in the future. Let's say you have given the password to 1,000 people, and a week later you have to ban a user from the downloads page. You will have to change the password for that page and notify the rest 999 of them for the new password. At this point, if I'm one of the 999 people, I would start swearing at you like a drunken sailor...
Instead, you need a plugin, or a simple shortcode which I can provide you if you want, to display any section of the page that you want ONLY for logged in users, and if you further want more control, a second shortcode to display any section of a page only to logged out visitors. So if you want to ban a person in the future, all you have to do is go to the users screen and disable that user, or disable him, without affecting the other 999 of them in any way... There are more sophisticated plugins, that not only can target logged in/out users, but user groups, like Admins, Editors, etc..., or individual users, by user ID, etc... the possibilities are endless, you have to determine how complicated you want to make things. I would recommend a simple code snippet to create the one or two simple shortcodes, and display your downloads only to logged in users, and if you want some information only to logged out users... Let me know, the soonest I can respond will be about 3 hours from now... - Pieter says: (25/03/2019 17:24:10)I get the point about the logged-on users instead of simple passwords. I will look into that solution first then.
But not only the pages where the file-downloads are available should be protected, also the links to the downloads should be.
So a link like www.mywp.com/secure.pdf should not work for anonymous visitors or web bots, and work for logged on users. I'm not sure that is supported out of the box. Actually, it's not supported in QS either, but I can see how this would be a very useful addition to QS. - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/03/2019 22:12:13)Ok, I'm back...
I can confirm that password protecting a NicePage does NOT work. This is another bug found in NicePage. If you password a non NicePage page, things will work.
I very quickly created a QS branded plugin, to display content to guests only, or to members only.
Here is a silent video how to install and activate the plugin, and how to use it in Gutenberg by using the "Classic" block, and how to use it in a NicePage. As you can see, the plugin will do EXACTLY what you want to do. Because of time constrains I did not create the tinymce buttons to generate the shortcodes for you, but because the shortcodes are easy to use, there are only 2 of them, and none of them contain and parameters...
Use of the shortcodes:
[qs-members]content[/qs-members]
[qs-guests]content[/qs-guests]
Watch this video for more clarity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIYBI0KjCjs&feature=youtu.be
I'll have way more things tomorrow... I will show you how very quickly and easily you can exponentially make the jstemplates better and more professional. - Pieter says: (25/03/2019 22:24:35)Many thanks Nick. I take a closer look tomorrow. Meantime my brother (who is a complete website noob) created his first WP with Nicepage: https://www.anesthesie-imelda.be - he did everything himself...
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/03/2019 22:31:32)Bottom line Pieter, password protecting NicePages, IS NOT POSSIBLE, simply because NicePage sucks !. If you want to password protect pages, then don't use NicePage for those purposes - which I don't recommend, and I explained why.
That said, you can use the shortcodes that I provided you, and use it to protect any part of a page, Nicepage or not, in fact you can protect multiple parts of pages, because you can have multiple instances of these shortcodes. This is one example how to utilize these shortcodes, another one is to display more aggressive ads to visitors, and different type of ads to logged in members. There are countless other situations to utilize them, displaying the price for an item for visitors, and a different one for members for example. - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (25/03/2019 22:35:50)Just saw your reply... very nice website by your brother, BUT, please tell him that the Homepage has some major responsive issues... again, NicePage bugs...
- Pieter says: (26/03/2019 08:39:54)Nick, amazing video. Thanks so much. So these shortcodes work fine in Nicepage as well... Very strange that NP missed the part with the password protected page in WP.
On the other hand, there is no way I can hand over such a shortcode system to the vast majority of my customers, including my smart ass brother Dr Cooreman... They would screw up big time (and blame me :)
Password protecting pages, fully protected sitemap branches, full blown intranets, and all that, were the first modules I developed for QuickerSite back in 2005. They were the reason for me to develop QS in the first place. I just needed an easy way to provide easy but secure password protection for certain pages and content. No way you can do that with html, css and js only.
For now, the only solution is not use Nicepage for password protected pages in WP. But it's yet another thing to explain to customers, and one day soon, they WILL turn a page to Nicepage, and cause major a security hole. Murphy's law.
Currently thinking on how to easily steal your idea of using shortcodes with protected content in QS. We could easily turn QuickerSite constants into "public", "public only", "members only". But honestly, who would use that if you have a full featured intranet at your disposal... Hard to tell... - Pieter says: (26/03/2019 14:13:11)owkay... this is why you never want to use WP, or in this case, a WP plugin.... Nicepage website is down, NP plugin is down, nothing works...
We're day 1 of this website. I host QuickerSites for more than a decade now. Never ran into this type of blocking issues... Never...
Exit WP. Exit NP. Not with me....
- nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/03/2019 15:18:11)Sometimes I get amazed how extremely intelligent people let their bias es interfere with their logic and assume the wrong things.
I said about the Nicepage server interruptions few days ago, actually I said that about Themler, but I assume they use the same kind of servers. Server issues and the bugs were the main reasons I had rejected in using NP. I could never ever use it in a professional environment.
Nicepage servers have NOTHING to do with WordPress. Having to rely on their servers WAS my main reason to reject using NP. I don't even consider NP a plugin, in reality it is a service. Any plugins that I use are independent, like the shortcodes plugin I sent you yesterday. - Pieter says: (26/03/2019 15:30:42)Story of my life Nick
The thing is: my brother absolutely LOVES Nicepage and the possibilities he now has with it, without even knowing what HTML, CSS or JavaScript actually is... That's the whole point of these modern tools.
But from time to time, technology fails. Meantime, their site is up again, as well as the WP plugin... Very annoying though. - nick6352683@yahoo.com says: (26/03/2019 15:42:41)Forget about NP. I have better solutions for him... I'll post and send you stuff tonight when I get home... be patient for a few hours...
