I Need A Website Access Control Solution

I need a solution which would enable me to control the cumulative size of downloaded data of each visitor during a certain period of time. For example, it would allow general visitors to download only 50 MB of data per month form a website, while registered members have unlimited access. Or, it would recognize each visitor by his IP address, and allows each visitor only 30 minutes of daily access time.

I know little about programming, and I would like to know if there is any aveilable sofware/script which can do this, or if I have to hire a programmer.

Here is the situation: A web server does not automatically know where any particular request is coming from. The way to control your content is to do what Dev Shed does: require everyone who wants to do anything you want to control to register, with a password. Then divide people up into 50 mb/mo people and unlimited people. Of course there are ways around such limitations. Many people have access to multiple computers and multiple e-mail addresses, so if the content you are trying to control is valuable enough, someone could find a way to download 50mb x 10 per month with multiple accounts.

I know of no source for an off the shelf system. If I were programming this problem, I would set up a web site with Microsoft .net framework capability. A database would hold the subscriber information and information about the downloads perhaps. I would choose Access or MySql depending on the expected traffic. Then a home page would welcome the user, and invite him to register, or if already registered to log on. Then he would have access to the download index page, and the amount of stuff he is entitled to. If he is limited, the database would be updated with the amount he is downloading this session. If he has already used his limit, he would be informed that he needs to change his status.

If changing status involves paying money, then that is a separate question with many answers.

There is no real way to do what you're saying, since if you try to determine usage by IP anyone hwo does nto have astatoc IP will be able to simply get an extra 50 hours each time they reconnect, and also its possible to use proxy servers to get around this problem, and like mccampion said, if the content is valuable enough people could just sign up for ten accounts to get at your information, one way to stop this would be to charge for even the 50mg/mo account so that it would end up being cheaper buying an unlimited account, but then you still have a problem from the people who have the 50mg/mo accounts where the user can simply run a spider to download all the content to his/her computer and then simply browse off their ow computer and simply download the new data every one or two days, and there is no way to prevent downloading of your content.

Thank you mccampion and kuza55. What we plan to do is a web design and stock image service for web designers and image collectors, there will be forums(IPB) and around 8 GB of all kinds of royalty free "designer images", clip arts and web page templates for our visitors. We plan to charge only those "heavy users" by membership fee and keep it free for most others. There is also some material provided by other artists that will charge a slight fee, which we would cover either by PPC or the membership income.

There is also a image/page search engine involved, which we try to solve by file name search rather than a database solution. Since we don't have a qualified programmer in our team, I am hereby trying to get a guide.

One other thing i forgot to mention is that, there is no real way to measure how long a user has looked at a page other than using Javascript; which can be easily disabled.

Your best bet is to hire a progammer. While there are a variety of scripts and progams availble that can do some of what you want, they would at least need altered to tie them together into your custom need.

Thus a programmer:
To create something unique from scratch
Or to put together existing components

it actually is possible to track this information, without javascript. I have done it before. I used the persons ip, and a cookie to... well, just know that it is very possible when you use a variety of languages to do it. If you want my help, email me at imedia220@adelphia.net