allowing temporary access to a protected web site

The Challenge

Provide “sneak preview” access to a password-protected web site without requiring registration or temporary passwords. Visitors coming from Site A can click to the protected area of Site B. After a set period of time, this “free” access expires and the visitor must register.

The Solution

Simplexity created a simple, cookie-based access control mechanism for Site B. A CGI script confirms the temporary login and sets the expiration time. From the visitor’s perspective, nothing complicated happens at all—they just click a regular hyperlink and the protected home page loads immediately.

Lessons Learned

There are very inexpensive ways to provide temporary access to an authenticated site as long as the project stakeholders understand the requirements and compliance issues. Some developers create very expensive and hard-to-maintain solutions for a challenge like this. Simplexity creates the most inexpensive and easily maintained solution that meets your customer’s need.

For more information about how Simplexity can help you today, please email or call Eric Hughes at 510/763.4488.

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