Using keys/passwords instead of site login - security

I'm thinking if it's a good idea to have a Web app which doesn't require a site login. This is for something like a public wiki where you just want to jump in and create stuff but still have a way to control access.
Content can be read/edited by the content creator (or a few other people).
What would be good references or existing apps that implement something like this?
EDIT: The closest similar "no signup" site I could find was ImageShack though there you can't edit what you've already submitted.

I'm not too sure on the value of this type of a system. Once the password/key has been in circulation for x time, they will be rendered useless.
I recommend rather going for something that's more scalable and open, with a good example being OpenID. Here's a good library of implementations for it as well.

Related

Extracting a Module from Orchard

I am having a little problem in my workplace where we have a IIS 6 server where Orchard (1.7) will not run. We are planning an upgrade but that's going to take some time.
Since we are using this site on IIS6 only to run one particular custom module we wrote for Orchard (basically a MVC module with its own Controllers/Actions etc.) I was thinking that a temporary solution could be to rip that module out of Orchard and run it independently.
Of course this extraction needs to take into account how many ties I have with the framework. I was wondering if there is some kind of guide to perform this and if there is something I need to take specially into account.
I am using the Users in Orchard so I would probably have to rewrite some users code. I am also using the Authorizer, which again may mean I need to re-wire something else.
It seems like a daunting job so I am looking for some quick tips on how to proceed if you know any.
Thanks a lot!
It all depends on what components you actually use within your module.
Hard to write any tutorial on this, really.
Regarding Orchard.Users - you could drop all related code usages and rely on the default ASP.NET roles-based authentication/authorization model.
If dependency injection is what you want to keep, then you need to integrate it yourself (for Autofac, but other DI containers will also work). Feel free to copy and change any Orchard components that you use, stripping the unneeded code.
In my opinion the hardest thing to strip out and replace would be any code that relies on content items - hope you don't have it. Rewriting this pieces sounds like an overkill. But if you just use IRepository, going for plain NHibernate or EF instead should be quite easy.

Using Orchard CMS is it possible to build an interface for fast list entry?

I'm digging into orchard CMS, but I'm a little bit skeptical that I might not have the ability to do something like create new content items quickly without posting back to the server.
For example. Let's say I define a content type for a product. One property a product might have is a collection of variations or similar products that can maybe be sorted by relevance. (Think a comic book with variant covers)
Could you build an interface for this where you enter a new product, and search for and include multiple variant products all from the same client interface without ever having to post back or do a hard page refresh?
I guess maybe, what I'm really asking is if it would be easy to expose the content through Web API or something like that, and from there you can really just build anything.
I'm a little worried about starting down the road of using a nice framework like this, only to find half-way through that I'm limited by the framework itself.
Think about OrchardCMS as a super set of ASP.NET MVC. You can build a custom controller to handle your own types or even content types (see OrchardServices)
In your case, just make a custom controller which will handle via actions the ajaxs requests to create, update, get related items and so on.
You should read the Sipke post series, in particularly this one: (http://skywalkersoftwaredevelopment.net/blog/writing-an-orchard-webshop-module-from-scratch-part-6) Another useful resource is the course of pluralsight.

Add search feature to simple website without mySQL database

I have a simple HTML site with 100+ pages or so. I want to add a search bar at the top so the user can search the site. I know about Google Custom Search, but it shows ads unless you pay at least $100. Obviously I'd like ad-less search on my site for free if at all possible!
I've also heard about Lucene/Solr, but they do not actually crawl the site. For that I would apparently need Nutch.
Anyway, the site I have runs on a Microsoft IIS6 server, but I have basically no knowledge as to how Solr, Nutch, etc. gets "installed" on the server.
Also: I'd like to point out that I do have a local copy of the site. Perhaps I can do one big initial nutch "crawl" locally that will create an .xml for Solr?? That would help me get "up and running", but probably wouldn't be a good long-term solution.
..so should I just use Google Custom Search? or is there a not-extremely-painful-to-implement alternative? The brain hurts folks.
You did not mention how many search requests you want to handle but if you use the json-rest-api of google's custom search you have 100 searchqueries a day for free and you can display them without any ads on your page.
An simple example request can be found here.
Here is an easy way that works pretty well, although you may be looking for something more than this.
http://sitecomber.com/getsitecomber/
You can create code to paste into your site in about 2 minutes. It doesn't get easier than that. Search is powered by Google, but results are isolated to your website.
EDIT: This no longer works.

How to get preview-image of a web-site?

I know that there are even some web-resources exist which allow you to get a preview of a web-site 'as it looks in a certain browser'.
I only need view from any browser as an image. Is it possible to get that image without people involvement? Can I get it without system programming, just by means of pure java/python/asp.net?
UPD: http://browsershots.org/ is an example of described web-resources.
The tools I know of that does this - really "just" launches a browser (programatically of course) and takes a screenshot of the contents of the browser and saves this in an image.
I think no matter what you do, you will have to find a way of doing something like this. If you by system programming are refering to OS API calls, then I think you will be out of luck. You might be able to get a third party library that can do this for you, but then that library will simply be making those system calls instead.
I see now others have posted links to places that might prove themself useful to you as well. Without having looked at the links, that would probably be the easiest and best way to go.
Good luck
I believe what you're looking for is browsershots
There are some websites that let you do this.
Try BrowserShots
PageGlimpse is a service
providing developers with programatic
access to thumbnails of any web page.
It has API based on REST protocol and some documentation.
You have a lot of things doing this for you. Take a look at stw for instance.
If you're using .NET, it is possible to do this using the DrawToBitmap method of the WebBrowser control (example here). However, as you'll see by the last comment on that example page, it doesn't work with Flash, and it's a bit 'temperamental' with sites that use complex Javascript for rendering.
I think your best bet is to do as others have said and use a third party thumbnail provider. I haven't used it, but http://www.thumbshots.com/ looks good.

No-code or little-code website

What is a (free) technology which requires the least amount of code for creating a website with the following requirements:
Sign-up/login
Form for adding your personal info. which gets databased
Each person can view and edit their own info
Admin can view and edit any
The form needs to be easily customizable and extensible (by the website's owner, not during run-time)
Is there a beginner tutorial for such a thing?
(For me, this question is about a friend who wants me to do this, but I want him to do it himself so I don't have to get roped into maintenance. I also want to keep it more general for the sake of Stack Overflow and future readers.)
Edit: I thought I remembered some ASP.NET tutorials that were mostly drag/drop or things where it was all but made for you from the database schema (which can be made with SSMS's GUI) but I can't seem to find them now.
Responding to posts below requesting specifics: this site will be for potential clients to sign-up and enter their company's info and fill out a form about their advertising needs.
I thought about putting this on SU instead, but since there was likely going to be some coding involved (I assumed no-code was an unreachable goal) SO seemed more appropriate.
Your friend can consider a framework like drupal. It has a bit of a learning code but, you can create a website with everything you ask for without code. You may want to modify it to change the look but there are themes for that.
Also, some hosts like godaddy.com have this installed and you do not have to worry about the complex installation procedures. Just start modifying the content of the site, select a built in template and go...
PhpBB? I think you need to specify what the website is going to be used for before you can get better/more specific answers.
... have a look at Drupal or Joomla, expect a learning curve nevertheless.
Is this friend a programmer as well? If so, I'd suggest building such a site using a PHP framework. Deploying an existing forum/wiki is also an option of course, but will probably have much more features than you describe. But if s/he's not a programmer, I don't see how s/he will be able to develop a site like that in a reasonable amount of time.
Why not using a CMS like wordpress, drupal and co. ?

Resources