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comic press usage

PostPosted: June 14th, 2010, 10:55 am
by crowden
I'm not certain which is the right forum to post on, and have already posted in General, but am putting it here as well just to be safe. I hope it's not viewed as a spam deal.

The question is whether S2members works with comicpress. The comics appear at the top and thus aren't really posts or pages. Can they be protected so they're only visible to members?
Thanks
Crowden

Re: comic press usage

PostPosted: June 14th, 2010, 8:04 pm
by osteodoc
Crowden,
Is foxtrot an example of what's 'normally' displayed? You said the comics appear at the top...

I looked at the page source of the comic used on foxtrot's home page. The comic is located between the body tags, like this:
Code: Select all
<body>
[comic.gif]
</body>

so it is regarded as a page.

s2Member would control an image, video, text, comic - whatever is located there - however you want it to; either public (for anyone to see) or private (restricted to members only).

Marty

Re: comic press usage

PostPosted: June 14th, 2010, 8:30 pm
by crowden2
Marty - Foxtrot.com is comicpress driven. But the way the php works for comicpress is that a particular category is tagged as "comic" and others as whatever one wishes (blogs, etc). The comic category causes the code to look in a "comics" folder and get the comic of the appropriate date, displaying it at the top, as you'd see in Foxtrot.com. Non-comic category entries, such as the blog, would appear beneath the comic, between the sidebar columns.

Pages are independently specified. (You can choose post or page for an entry). These display on their own page and the comic doesn't appear at all.

Here's a post:

http://www.nicky510.com/comic/pass-the-butter/

and here's a page:

http://www.nicky510.com/blog/skin-deep-more/

More in a sec.

Re: comic press usage

PostPosted: June 14th, 2010, 8:35 pm
by crowden2
I went ahead and set up s2members and made the landing page a static page (the subscription page actually) since I wasn't sure what would happen if it remained just the home page (which was displaying a comic). It seems to work, as far as I can tell right now.

So I have two issues. First, to verify it really does work the way I'm intending - namely a subscribe option for comics, a different level for blogs and a different level for both. The way the setup was worded made me a bit unsure it'd work since the category for toons is 1 and blogs is 10. So having another level for both 1 and 10 makes sense to me but maybe not to the boolean logic working with the code.

2nd issue, which MUST have been resolved, is how to kill RSS feeds and hot linking. Both would be obvious ways to circumvent the subscription and I've verified that RSS right now is fully operational (which is a bad thing).

Whew, that's a bunch. Any insights most welcome.
Thanks
Crowden

Re: comic press usage

PostPosted: June 19th, 2010, 2:11 pm
by Jason Caldwell
Hi Crowden. I'm not familiar with Comic Press, but from what I've seen you describe thus far, it sounds like you need to use s2Member's "Tag" protection, and/or "URI" protection. Both of these are available under: s2Member -> General Options.

If you are tagging everything "comic", then you can protect all Posts/Pages with the tag "comic" by adding that tag to your list of restrictions under: s2Member -> General Options -> Tag Level Restrictions.

Now, if I've completely mis-understood you; and instead, you want to block access to a specific section ( i.e. the comics sections ) within ANY Post/Page... you will need to use s2Member's Advanced Conditionals, by integrating those into your theme ( wrapping the sections that will contain comics with them ). Here is an example:

Code: Select all
<?php if(current_user_can("access_s2member_level1")): ?>
[ display comics here ]
<?php endif; ?>

There is a ton of information and code samples inside your Dashboard, under:
s2Member -> API Scripting -> Advanced Conditionals.

Re: comic press usage

PostPosted: June 19th, 2010, 2:11 pm
by Jason Caldwell
s2Member does NOT protect feeds (yet), because I'm still looking into the best possible way of handling this. Most sites are designed to release "excerpts" within their feeds, and under most circumstances, it is NOT desirable to block access to any feed, because that would prevent spiders/bots/crawlers from gaining access to your feeds ( like Google for instance ).

So long as you're releasing "exceprts" and not the whole article, s2Member's protections are fine, because the Post/Page that is being released in a feed ( in excerpt format ), is still protected through its Permalink on-site.

However, I do realize this is a potential security hole, and depending on how you're releasing your feeds, and on what you're restricting access to exactly, it can either be a tiny hole, or a huge hole.

I'm open to suggestions. Please chime in here if you have an opinion.
I'll try to address this in the very next release.