Hi all,
I am creating a website and want to make certain areas (most areas) of the site membership based requiring registration and password.

I have two questions:

I want to avoid someone having to enter their password every time they click a link to another area of the site. So for example, they log-in to get to the "Teachings" page and then see a teaching they want to read and click the link. Since they are logged in I want them to be able to access that file. The same would apply if they then wanted to go to the "download area" and download something.
Is this possible with CC software or do I need something more?

The second part to this question relates to search engines access. If someone Googles a key word and a page in my password protected website comes us, what prevents them from being able to access the sub folders by way of that link?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions. I think Joomla is way too confusing and I know that Word-press in an option but I want to see if I can do this myself before going that route. At minimum, I would like to understand more about the process of protecting websites.

Thanks so much in advance!!

For your first question you can use Website access manager to password protect a folder with the pages that are only for members.

The second question can be resolved by the use of CC Sitemapper. You can configure it to not list certain folders/pages.

Hiya Dee Bee,

No worries on the site pages being accessible via links, if someone that has not accessed that page clicks a link in google or anywhere else for that matter they will be prompted with the ID & PW popup just like anyone else would, it doesn't cache the site in Google allowing people to get to it.

Another suggestion for your concern of your users clicking links in the protected area would be to maybe give some of those links the target="blank" attribute so they open in new pages/tabs. This way they won't be leaving the protected page and required to relog in.

If you do not want any of your pages being indexed by the main Search Engines, just add this meta tag line above the </head> tag

Thanks so much all for the suggestions. I appreciate anyone who is willing to take time ot help someone else.
Blessings, Dee.