That's a pretty general question. Its certainly sounds possible. But, we have no idea what "membership software" you're referring to? What is it being used for, etc.?

Thanks for the reply gcornelisse. I don't have a software package in mind at this time. I am thinking I need a membership software package to set up the protected area, but I may not.

I will direct users to the protected area. There will be one form available to fill out and submit. Once a user begins filling out the form, will they be able to stop, save and come back at a later time and finish filling out the form?

Like I said, I may not even need a membership software program, but I do want users to have to sign in to get to the area where the form is located. Once they sign in, are they automatically signing into an area where what they do have complete privacy, or if they save the form, will anyone else be able to see the form, or have access to it?

Like I said, I may or may not need a membership site program, but I know I want the users to have to sign in with a user name and password in order to access the form.

Not asking for programming help, but am asking if this is simple, or do you have to look for a program that does something other than set your site up as a membership site?

The key is for each user as you mentioned can come back and complete the details. You definately want a few things to happen here and for a couple of reasons. 1.) You want the user to register for a login - this can be a very simple form, just enough information to get the following.
A. an email address (for list building)
B. username
C. password

2.) With a login sent to them you can have them verify the login creation as well so that you can verify the email sent was a usable one.

This will enable the user to save a form that is specific for a particular user login. Can you give some more information about what "membership" site software means as well as i am a little lost there.

darellbee, the plug-n-play "membership" software you're looking for may not exist as a product specifically. Usually you program the software yourself or try your luck with a CMS system like Joomla or Drupal. You'll want to find something that has user management modules and possibly a form builder of some variety.

Thanks Gary. That's exactly what I wanted to know. I have been looking for a while and none of the programs I have been looking at addressed the issue of what the users would be able to do once they have signed in to your site. It looks like there will be a little more work than I had imagined but, I will hunt and peck until something works. Thanks for your input!!

Im having the same problem I have it in my cpanel but dont know what to do with it after I install it

Aloha darellbee

If I understand your requirements correctly you want to have users fill out a form after logging in. If they don't complete the form then their data will be saved so they can return and finish at a later date. Is this correct?

I worked on a project with the same requirements way back in 1999 and 2001 and actually found two ways to accomplish this.

The site in question was a very extensive questionnaire that included multiple-choice and text responses. As there were over 50 questions it was divided into multiple pages, and users had the option on each page of continuing or saving their work for later.

In the first iteration of the site I held each pages response in a cookie that was stored on the users machine, which would be read back when they returned to the site. Although his worked it had its limitations - cookies are limited in the amount of data they can hold and the user needed to complete the questionnaire using the same machine they initiated it on.

This lead to the second version, which I coded using ASP. In this version the users logged in and stored the results in an SQL Server database. This worked much better as there was no limit to the amount of data they could store, and they could resume the questionnaire from any Internet-connected workstation. It also allowed us to track the user activity (how many times it took to finish, how long they were logged in etc)

Remember this was a decade ago. If I were to write this again I would certainly use PHP and MySQL.

Hope this helps, please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Bill