Shout out for Sitelok - password protection & membership software

[dave]

As many of you know, I have long been around the forums - and have spoken highly of many of the developers. I am currently finishing up a site for a local government for their long running annual festival. Potential vendors apply through a form on the site - and then city employees need the ability to accept or reject the applicants. In addition, the fees owed are determined based on the type of product being sold (e.g., food, arts, non profit, etc.), the size of the booth, how many electrical outlets are needed, and if the vendor wants to be considered for best in show. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a Stack or Add on that can remotely come close to being able to auto-calculate based on four different fields.

So, (as usual), I purchased another copy of Sitelok and installed it ($40 first instance, $20 for each additional installation).

Installing Sitelok is a breeze. 1) create a MySQL database; 2) edit one of the installation files (enter name of db and password); 3) transfer the folder of Sitelok files to your server; and 4) enter the installation URL in your browser and click enter. It couldn’t be easier.

However, this is where Adrian Jones of Vibralogix gets a HUGE SHOUTOUT. The software can not auto-calculate fields out of the box. So, I reached out to Adrian to see if he might write the code to do so. YES! And, for an unbelievably reasonable cost (LESS THEN THE HALF THE PRICE that an extra license costs).

To get an idea, this illustration shows how a person needs to pick a category and booth size. They then have the option of adding between 0 and 3 electrical outlets ($100 ea) and whether or not they want to be considered for Best in Show ($25). Thanks to Adrian’s efforts, Sitelok does all of the calculations for my client.

So- to sum up…if you are in need of membership software, or if you need to lock down certain pages (or files), you absolutely can’t do better then Sitelok. The product is rock solid…and the customer service is flat-out the best available.

Questions? I’m always happy to answer them.

Cheers!

Dave

[Mathew (Mathew Mitchell)]

@dave Completely agree. BTW I had zero idea Sitelok could do the example you gave with an illustration. Impressive.

I use Sitelok on several course websites and it’s a joy to use. For a course website it’s great because:

1. you can limit who can login to pages to only those in the class
2. you can limit certain pages as accessible only to specific individuals, or small groups, within the class (great for posting feedback, etc.)

An additional ingenious possibility with Sitelok is to have SSO (single-sign-on) for Disqus. This is done very ingeniously so that there’s SSO and the Disqus conversations are kept private and can’t be found via google. With Adrian’s Blab plugin it’s then quite possible to set up individual avatars for members. It means you can end up with private protected conversations complete with avatars (if you’re into avatars).

Joe Workman’s PageSafe stack is great for pages where everyone uses the same password. But for sites that need individual logins, and for other more nuanced needs, Sitelok continues to amaze me.

[Aaron]

Thanks for sharing your experience with SiteLok and its fantastic support! I love hearing these stories.

[lynnnight]

Oh and I see they offer a manual specifically for working with RW. So lovely.

[TeamSDA (Varied Team Members)]

Hello Community… Saw this post and would like to also give SiteLok and its developer an A+. The developer behind this membership solution is fantastic, one of the best I have ever worked with.

Thank you for this post Dave, love to see this type of positive input, you are what makes this a great community.

Kind Regards,
Dave

[dave]

I just had to weigh back in - what follows is an unsolicited comment from the client for whom I just installed Sitelok. They are using it to keep track of 500 vendors for their annual fall festival - including over 30 fields per vendor (parking passes, booth numbers, payments, tables & chairs, etc., etc.). To say the least, they are extremely excited to be on a new, much more robust system.

I’m almost bouncing up and down in my chair sending out these emails! Only sending them to one vendor now, but am loving the look! I know we need to talk about including fields and links in some, but these are GREAT!!! We may want to tweak some text too now that we see them “live.”

Cheers,

Dave

PS - The owner of Sitelok is not only very familiar with Rapidweaver - he built his entire site using Rapidweaver!

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

Dumb question - but this works with the Sequel DB & thus will is platform independent & works using Mac, correct?

[dave]

@Runamok It works with MySQL and works beautifully using a Mac. From the client’s perspective, it works with anything (Mac, PC, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc., etc.).

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

Thank you very much.

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

I bought the thing. Based upon this review.
Haven’t installed it - I am nowing seeing reviews which calls it malware & a scam.

Are they crooks?

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

“membership software.”
This appears to be a subscription service.

Can someone please address the comments on the web that cast the software in negative light?
This is a little disconcerting. Hard to assess whether someone disgruntled is having a bad day, or whether there really are issues with the item to be concerned about.

My choices were Sitelok & PageSafe. I may have selected the wrong item.

[dave]

They are not crooks.

I don’t understand your concern. Both products you mention handle protecting pages very well. Neither product requires on-going payments (SiteLok is per-domain…2nd and subsequent being half price). The big differences are a) Sitelok handles multiple pages or even entire sections whereas PageSafe handles them on a one-by-one basis, and; b) Sitelok can also be used as membership software whereas PageSafe can not. If your site simply requires a page or two to be blocked using a password, then PageSafe would be a fantastic choice. But, if you desire to password protect pages (or sections) to create members-only areas, want to be able to add users in multiple ways (join by registering, join by paying, manually, etc.), require an easy-to-use control panel to manage the users, create login or registration forms, or use it with third-party systems (PayPal, Stripe, MailChimp, Zendesk, etc.) then Sitelok is absolutely the way to go.

I’ve used SiteLok for years and have never, ever read anything negative about the service. I don’t know the owner of Vibralogix, but I feel strongly enough about his product that if you can point me to the negative comments, I’ll be happy to try and address them. Or, better yet, I’ll bet @vibralogix would like the opportunity, too.

[vibralogix (Adrian Jones)]

Adrian from Vibralogix here. Can you point me to the pages where you are seeing reviews saying its malware & a scam. I can assure its not of course! If you have any specific concerns please contact me directly anyway.

[mdlong (Matthew Long)]

Let me also throw my support behind Sitelok, and in particular Adrian at Vibralogix. I run a large medical education website and have used Sitelok since the beginning to control access to the pages and manage over 1600 students. Quite simply, it is the most important piece of technology behind our site and has never let us down. Adrian has been unbelievably helpful and generous with his time when I have tried to implement new functions, or troubleshoot issues (usually of my own making). So whoever has suggested that there is some sort of ‘scam’ or ‘malware’ involved is either confusing Sitelok for something else, or has other motives for casting such untruths.

Just my two cents worth…

[Rovertek (Rob D)]

@Runamok – You got a bit confused about the negative reviews. They pertain to the SiteLock system that needs to be installed on a server (totally different thing than Sitelok). When you have it activated, it shows as a little padlock sign on the pages of your site and says that your site is “safe”. Some hosting companies offer SiteLock as an additional paid service.

Some people consider this a scam and a useless piece of technology, especially so that you have to pay monthly/yearly subscription for it. Some even say that SiteLock introduces malware on their site. As usual, you have to make up your own mind deciding whether or not to treat it as something to be grateful for or something to avoid.

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

There are a few out there. Some went pretty far in accusation.
Hence, my pointed question.

I didn’t delve deeply into them since I could not verify them, posing my question here since apparently this would be a place for a user base that actually knew whether they were flagrant accusations, or not.

The product itself reads well (Haven’t applied it yet).
I must say it was disconcerting to see after I bought the product & didn’t describe what I read in product literature.

I wasn’t finding reference to it here in the product pages & it took a bit of hunting to find it -
which then leads to discovering said rants on the web.

[Runamok (e.g.,)]

Fairly simple: Either its truth or a lie.
Since it appears to be trolls ripping what people here think is a fine product, this is reassuring to know.

It never hurts to ask, y’know.
Especially, of a user base that should be very conversant with a product.

It was on the basis of this thread & reading the sales literature that I bought it, then found negative comments that I could not corroborate without finishing the install.

I am more than happy to hear that its a solid product.

[Mathew (Mathew Mitchell)]

@Runamok

I must say it was disconcerting to see after I bought the product & didn’t describe what I read in product literature.

What you are writing is very confusing to me. I think you are confusing 2 different products. The product literature (i.e. website) perfectly describes what the product (Sitelok) does. Can you be more specific? Provide a relevant link? As one person mentioned above there is some possibility you are confusing SiteLock (notice different spelling) and SiteLok. Very different products. Or perhaps there is some other confusion going on. But I have never heard about people being confused regarding a disconnect between the Sitelok product and the website describing it. New one to me.

[kryten (Stuart)]

You must be mixing up Sitelok and “Sitelock”.

Sitelok and Vibralogic are absolutely 100% rock solid gold. I cannot praise the product and the company highly enough and any weavers looking for the de-facto industrial strength solution for security should investigate it.

Hope you bought the right thing!

[dave]

@Runamok

My choices were Sitelok & PageSafe. I may have selected the wrong item.

I’m very confused too. Based on your post above, it seems to me (and most likely everyone else) that you’re looking to lock down pages…and most likely incorporate some sort of membership. This is exactly what SiteLok does - and does incredibly well. Plus, it’s exactly what Adrian says it does on his website.

• If your goal is to password-protect pages - you bought the right product.
• If your goal is to also include some sort of membership protection - you bought the right product.
• If your goal is to do either of the above using a rock-solid, proven means of doing so, with first-class after-sales support by the owner - you’ve bought the right product.

If anything on Adrian’s website seems disingenuous, I’d like to know what it is - I just looked it over again and what I see are the first two bullet points directly above. I added the third because his support is top-notch.