Re: Feature request: password controlled access to cat

My quest to implement this from existing extensions has come to a dead end so I think its a good candidate for a feature request.

As a photographer I will sell photos taken at events like weddings, sporting, musical, school and many other types of closed group events.

These photos can be pruchased online and especially with the autocreation of products, a photographers life can be greatly simplified.

Most people would not want their wedding or childrens sport club photos available for just everyone to purchase.

What I would like to do is place my products in a restricted space and send a common password to the organiser/co-ordinator who distributes it to everyone who is authorised to purchase the pictures.

My suggestion is to add a function to categories to password protect it. From a user perspective it would look like this:

Click on the menu item 'Joe and Janes wedding' in my shop
An enter password window or sceen is presented
User enters password received from organiser and the photos are presented on the page, makes purchases and registers as normal.
User remains logged in for the remainder of the session

For the administrator it would look like this:

Create category as currently done
Select the Yes radio button titled Password protect?
Enter a password in the text field
Send password to organiser who distributes to shoppers

Other not so good alternatives:

I could miss-use a Joomla user by creating a genric one for which the user id and password is distributed to shoppers because multiple addresses can be entered into the shipping address. Firstly this will confuse users with physical products being sent to fellow group members, and a new email cannot be entered so that would mean purchased files would aways be sent to the user who's email is in the system.

I could create a group but that would mean I would need to explain the process and would have to place everyone in the group. I would also have to co-ordinate with the co-ordinator to ensure that I only add valid users to the group.

I am implimenting a work around that I would never implement for a customer if I was making a site for them, I simply could not explain it to them I can barely explain it to myself.

Thanks for your reply.

I think tho that you would make many photographers very happy if you did this, or rather, you would make your product very interesting to photographers as many photographers work on a pay per photo basis. Just magine the school photographer for example - it would be a great tool for them.

I will impliment my crazy work around for now and see how things take off I wont describe it here as its not very secure.

If it shows real promise then I will get back to you for a quote.

Thanks again.