1 reply to this topic

[justanothernoob]

Hey everybody. I have a program that I want to try to sell. It will be free to download and use, but certain features will be for paying users only. What I want is for users to create an account name and password, and then if they decide to pay for it, I can set their account so they can use the extra features.

I have a website and a hosting server that I can access using ftp. I am pretty sure what I need to set up is a Microsoft SQL server. I'm not asking for a complete guide, I just don't where to start. I am willing to read up and learn on anything I need. I am just not sure what I need. I know C#.

Where do I start in setting up a user database server for my program? Thanks.

[gregwarner]

There are already various threads here on this topic, so searching for those should give you some good ideas. However, it sounds like you're still on the step of figuring out how to get your software to communicate with the server.

I wouldn't have your software connect via ftp, nor directly to the SQL database either. Your best option would be to write a small "server" script in PHP or ASP.NET, and have your client-side software communicate with the server via that URL for the script you wrote. That way, you protect all database access by requiring clients to go through your gateway script. Your clients send their credentials through an HTTP GET or POST, and from there, your server side script simply checks the credentials in the database and returns some formatted data for your client to read, such as authentication keys or whatever else you want to include.