Creating a Guest Sign In

I am interested in adding an additional sign in option for my customers when shopping on my website. I have noticed with some websites, for convenience sake, offer an option to sign in and pay for their items using a "sign in as a guest" option. I understand that this option may not allow for a user to create an account or establish a history or record of their purchases, but I have noticed that we have lost some customers because of the need to login before completing their purchase.

However, I still want to continue requiring a login option for those who have an account with us and desire to take advantage of some discount features we have incorporated into our eCart. In order to capture a larger percentage of customers wishing to shop on our website, I would also like to consider creating a guest sign option.

Do you know of any way this can be done; any online resources or sites that provide some detail in setting up a guest option? Do you know of any existing forum thread you have addressed that has outlined the creation of such an option?

Any assistance you may offer would be greatly appreciated.

This is going to require some modification to the user registration solution pack that will not be supported.


You would need to Create a new column in the database for User Level .

for all other users, set the user level to one.

Then you will need to create the Guest user account, set the user name to guest and give a simple password.


You will need to modify the login to store the user level in the a session variable and create an access rule that will only access if the user level is set to 1.

then apply that access rule to pages like the profile page that the guest user account should not be able to access.


for details on user level access, see the "User Level Authentication" tutorial on the security assist support page:
securityassist/

I am replying to a very old post of mine, and I am seeking assistance with the process Jason outlined above. I am attempting to following the steps outlined above and so far I have created a userLevel for my guest account and inserted in my user database an email address (UserEmail) and a simple password (UserPassword). I also inserted the guest level user (10) under my "All Users" Group Rules using SecurityAssist to ensure that the checkout.php page recognized the guest as a valid userLevel.

I then proceeded to insert the form action on my user_LogIn.php page to pass the guest session over to the checkout page. Here is what I came up with:

<form name="LogIn" method="post" action="<?php echo ($_SERVER["PHP_SELF (isset($_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"])?"?".htmlentities($_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"]):""));?>">
<input name="UserEmail" type="hidden" value="guest@hrconsortium.net">
<input name="UserPassword" type="hidden" value="guest101">
<a href="checkout.php" onClick="LogIn.submit();" class="button4">shop as guest</a>
</form>

I am using the above code so the "shop as guest" button could post the guest login variables over to the checkout.php page. However, I am running into problems, as the method I am using above is not working. I should also note that my checkout.php page has a SA access restriction which returns the individual back to the Login Page if they are not already signed in. I used WebAssist's tutorial in creating the access restriction using a URL variable where users_LogIn.php?checkout=1.

I have attached a copy of my login page so you can see what I have done so far. Thank you.

you cant just submit the values to the either like this and have them recognized.

you would need to have the guest go through the login page.

a better strategy would be to add a note to the login page:

TO shop as a guest, login using the following credentials:
guest@hrconsortium.net
guest101

this way they are logged in using the guest account.

Again, thank you for your insight. I was unaware. However, I will give your alternative approach a try.