How to structure member website

[manlio]

I'm here again. I have read a tons of post about members and front end login but now I'm really overwhelmed by all this information.

I need a guideline to setup my website. I have Ryan login method running and functional, and now I need to structure my website.

I have a table with all my members and I need to import in PW. I don't need registration because users still exist.

I was thinking to import in users pages (I don't know exactly how) and extend the users template with all the fields that I need.

Then I really don't know how to structure for example courses organized by members. I was thinking to create users as pages and built children for every member that represent courses (altough still I'm not sure how to do), but in this case user are stored in pages and not as regular users so I'm not sure if my login could be changed to work (I can investigate). I'm really confused yes I know....

I miss an organized tutorial about the front end or production files to start from.

If I can complete the task I would like to organize all these information and fill the gap. In the meanwhile thank you.

[kongondo]

Manlio,
 
I may not be able to give you specifics but here's a couple of things...
 

Registration
You say this
 

I have Ryan login method running and functional, and now I need to structure my website.

but then add this

I don't need registration so the user still exist.

I am a bit  confused. To clarify, you mean that you will not be registering NEW users because you already have users, right?

Users

I have a table with all my members and I need to import in PW. I don't need registration so the user still exist.

I was thinking to import in users (I don't know exactly how) and extend the users template with all the fields that I need

What format is your table in? CSV, SQL? Importing is not difficult but we need to know the format they are in. Yes, extending the users template is easy and is normally the way to go. There's various examples on the forums. If you need more help here just ask. Importing passwords can be tricky though.

I was thinking to create users as pages

No need to create users again. Just use PW inbuilt users (which, behind the scenes, are actually pages themselves! ; Don't let this confuse you. Think of pages as data storage containers [of course the data is in the fields themselves])

Courses

Then I really don't know how to structure for example courses organized by members.

One thing you need to clarify is how you want the site to function. I guess here you are really talking about categorising your content. Have you seen this tutorial I did about categorising content? If not, have a look and see where your use case fits in. Then, you can come back and structure your site in the most suitable fashion.

I miss an organized tutorial about the front end or production files to start from.

If I can complete the task I would like to organize all these information and fill the gap. In the meanwhile thank you.

We appreciate all the help we can get. Yes, tutorials are not that many but as you have probably noticed, we are working on it.

My advice for your task at hand. Divide up the task and tackle one issue at a time (but of course, you need to have a clear picture of where you are going first, otherwise you might be going round in circles). Try things and ask specific questions (once you've searched and not found an answer is preferable ) but feel free to ask please.

Edited August 11, 2014 by kongondo

[manlio]

Thank you kongondo, I didn't read before the categorizing tutorial.

I am a bit  confused. To clarify, you mean that you will not be registering NEW users because you already have users, right?

Yes, I already have users and the administrator (me) will add them by hand. So no registration needed.

So let's start from the beginning and I will try step by step developing my idea.

1. Following your directions I tried importing users.

They are stored in a Mysql DB with password not encrypted (I need to encrypt that for sure) and I used Navicat to export into xls and then to csv.

I used module Import Pages from CSV and I was able to import (without password) users as children of a page. I'm not able to import users directly into PW users and I miss passwords.

2. A new problem that I was thinking about using the page structure, is that usually we interact directly with the database online (using Navicat) to change users attributes. If I use pages and not a standard table I think would be really uncomfortable changing this data. I'm right? In this scenario I could use something like ProField Table to maintain all my current tables and taking advantage of PW api? I have just give a quick read so maybe I misunderstood.

Thank you