Hello! Newbie here with some questions...
 

Hello everyone,

I just signed up. Great site guys!

I'm based in the UK and I have recently been designing my first adult site. It's just a single girl escort site which will very soon have a private members section.

We have the site design, we have our hosting company, we're not sure we'll be looking for sponsors or anything like that as it's just a little amateur, independent thing.

I uploaded the site last week and I'm just waiting on my business application to come through before I can set up with ccbilleu and get the members section up and running.

I have a few questions that i hope someone can help with. Sorry if these questions are stupid.....

1. When I upload the members section of the site, should I just upload it all to the same directory as the rest of the site (the public folder) or is this a security nightmare in waiting? If this will be a problem then where should I upload it to?

2. Are there any other simple ways to protect the private members content from hackers or password thieves?

3. I'm looking at using ccbilleu. I've heard that ccbill has a problem with watersports sites (even though I coudn't find anything in the ccbilleu TOS about it). Watersports will not be a big feature of the sites members section, just one or two galleries. Does this problem apply to ccbilleu as well as the American ccbill?

4. The site will soon have a 'store' section, selling used knickers, vibrators, etc...
We know from experience that some customers like the girl to urinate on the panties before sending them out. Even though we wouldn't be using ccbilleu to sell these items, would they have a problem in dealing with a site that sells those kind of items?

5. As far as the 2257 stuff goes, we have been getting the models to sign release forms but as yet we haven't taken copies of ID. Will this cause a big problem? Is it best to try to contact the models we've used to get copies of their ID? All of the models we use are well over 18 (I don't think we've used anyone under the age of 28).

Again, sorry if some of these questions seem dumb.

Thank you in advance,
heatwave1.

1. Put your members content and pages in its own subdirectory. A typical setup would be domain.com/members/.

2.Strongbox is the most popular security solution that I know of. Many such solutions charge monthy fees, where as Strongbox is a flat fee per site and that includes installation. And yes, it integrates with CCBill.

3.I have no idea.

4. Selling the items may not be the issue. The problem you'll run into is shipping them. There will always be places which it is illegal ship any sex-related item. You'll want to limit your shipping destinations to avoid such puritanical places.

5. Definately see if you can get copies of the IDs of models you've used in the past. Being that you are not in the U.S., you aren't under their immediate legal scrutiny, but you may want to transfer ownship of the site or sell content to an America some day - so cover your bases now.

Thank you for the advice Useless Warrior.

We will definitely look into Strongbox.

I don't think that we'd be transfering ownership of the site at any point but we will still look into getting the neccessary ID from our models.

I think that we will limit the sale of the items to the UK so we won't have those problems with certain countries.

If anyone else can help with question three then I'd be most happy.

Thanks again,
heatwave1.

They may give you a problem with #3. I would recommend not putting that info up until after you have your ccbill account set up and visa approved. Also as far as the members protection you can do as UW said. Create a seperate dir for it. You can give ccbill access to your ftp and they will do the upload an config of the files to ensure the dir is protected. Don't quote me on this as it's been over 2 years since I let them do that. I think they do it with htaccess. But I never had any issues with them setting it up and it worked just fine. As far as the PEE content, like I said I would toss that up after you are visa approved. I don't think the people at ccbill really care, it's the visa people who are uptight about it. Once you are approved it's kind of hard for ccbill to check all the sites they are managing. One other small part of advice.
CCBill is going to ask you for the website name of which your master account will be connected. Do not use the name for the site you will be using. If I had to do this all over again I would create a site for my business and attach my ccbill master account to it. This way when someone signs up at your site they will get an email saying something like thank you for joining blahblahbusiness.com, You can edit that mail to include the site they signed up at. IE welcome to blahblahbusiness.com owners of yoursite.com. So the users don't think they were scammed.
Now you may be wondering why you would want to do this. Well I have a few sites, and when I created subaccounts for them, all the mails that were sent out no matter what site someone signed up at were for the main site account. IE someone signs up at site#2.com they still got a welcome mail saying they signed up at masteraccount.com. This caused me problems cause I got mails from my customers asking me why they got a mail like this when they did not sign up at that site. I had to go through the visa approval process a 2nd time for the 2nd site and that sucked.

1. When I upload the members section of the site, should I just upload it all to the
same directory as the rest of the site (the public folder) or is this a security
nightmare in waiting? If this will be a problem then where should I upload it to?

That would be an organizational nightmare as well as making any
kind of security pretty much impossible. As mentioned by others, the whole
members' area typically goes in a directory (folder) called "members/",
but use lots and lots of folders within "members/" as well. Assume that your
site will grow to have 10,000 or more files. You'll want to be able to quickly
find a certain file in order to work on it. So organize well - think about the logical
sections of your site and put each in a different folder. We might have something
like below. Just imagine you are organizing 10,000 different things in your garage
and you needed to be able to quickly find and use any particular item and organize
your files similarly. You'd want small containers keeping a fewer similar items
together, then those small containers would go in larger tubs labeled with what's
inside. You'd put the large tubs together on shelves with auto supplies on one
shelf, painting supplies on another shelf, etc. The shelves would each be part of
a whole shelving unit, so you might have one shelving unit with 8 different shelves
of seasonal goods like Christmas lights and Halloween supplies, then a different
shelving unit with tools, etc. That way you can find your Christmas tree stand
(or your main logo) when you need it. It might look something like this:


2. Are there any other simple ways to protect the private members content from
hackers or password thieves?

Strongbox will take care of the crackers and password sites.
See http://bettercgi.com/strongbox/



5. As far as the 2257 stuff goes, we have been getting the models to sign release
forms but as yet we haven't taken copies of ID.

Oops.

Will this cause a big problem?

Not until and unless they arrrest you, or you want to sell your site or some of your
content or when CCBill decides to start asking for 2257 docs or ...
It's not normally a problem, for most people, yet. Having a broken smoke alarm
doesn't NORMALLY cause a problem either.

Is it best to try to contact the models we've used to get copies of their ID?

I would sure do that if you can. I wouldn't be horrendously concerned about it
if you were unable to reach a couple of them. That depends on your personal
appetite for risk.