I have a client that is a golf course and residential community, and we do many things for them including a RapidWeaver website, they are requesting that I move the currently “printed” directory (phone book) online which contains: name, address, phone and email information of members and residents. This would be under a password protected page. I have concerns about this because that leaves alot of information out there for everyone to share electronically. My thoughts are if done it is read only, no copy and paste. I’m not a fan of this idea to begin with. Would there need to be permission from each family to do this online?
Looking for feedback from the Ministry of Common Sense here, any thoughts or first hand experinece would be mich appreciated.
What format are you planning, a webpage or something like a PDF?
There is no real way to prevent people who have access, from copying from a webpage. You can make it “more” difficult but not impossible. With a “file” like a PDF, you would need to take care on how you “password” protect the resource, as a lot of the password protection available isn’t really designed for protecting separate resources like a PDF file on the web server.
Regarding format I’m not sure yet this was just prosposed to me earlier today, as there are many options available; PDF, Excel, JPEG. I ulimately want you to be able to view and read it easily.
One of my other clients we print a quarterly publication and I post an old issue for potental new members to read in a flipbook format that is a jpeg, you can view here.
I’m also dealing with a fair amount of people over 65 years of age who are not all tech savvy and who also value their privacy.
You might propose to the PTB (Powers That Be) that you provide him/her with a passworded, not modifiable, PDF that he/she could send to those who request it. Then put a statement on the web like Available on Request by email (in some fashion of your liking to get it to PTB).
Let PTB know that he/she has to be part of the security of private data.
Hi, @Diligent1 If I were in your situation, I would strongly suggest to the client to forget about this plan. It is too dangerous from the privacy point of view—especially when you are dealing with elderly users, who—most likely—are not very computer/Internet savvy and can not be expected to take care of their own privacy.
As an alternative, you might employ an email, sending a PDF document on request from users.
Is there other needs for a “members only” area?
You should consider something like sitelok Membership Software, it is very reasonably priced and it’s easy to integrate with RapidWeaver sites.
I use Sitelok myself and am very fond of it. If you have budget for purchasing Sitelok, that would probably be the best solution. As Doug mentioned, Sitelok can protect not only access to your pages but also to documents, photos, etc that you use on those pages. It does not protect against taking screenshots, though.
Thanks for the feedback I appreciate it. Currently there are two (2) sections of the website that are private; members and residents. I currently use the “Locked” stack from Yuzool themes. These sections have budget, meeting minutes, etc that are not for the general public. I will look into Sitelok as an alternative.