Pre-sales question: usage for adult photography site

[SoftDux]

Hi all

I hope someone could shed some light on this one for me. A client of our wants to setup a photography website, aimed at beginner models & photographers, with the following functionality:

1. Gallery must be open to anyone to view
2. To upload, they need to register, and will be allowed 20 uploads, max 72dpi
3. As users partake in the community (rating other photos, recommendations, votes, etc), their ranks increase, and they get upgraded to the next group (each group will increase with say 20 photos, or something)
4. To register, they need to verify their age (of possible, this needs to be foolproof, somehow). If the person is older than 18 years of age, they can upload to the adult galleries, and browse them as well.

So, it's important that minor's wont be able to browse the adult galleries.

Can this be done?

[Greg]

vBPicGallery uses the vBulletin user registration and permissions system. It is not a stand alone product. There is no rating system at this time. Photos are limited by file size only, not image resolution.

There is no "fool proof" age check in place that I am aware of.

Thanks

[SoftDux]

I'm aware of the fact that it needs VBulletin to work, and it will use the registrations, but do you think I'll be able to accomplish what I need to, with VB + vBPicGallery?

If anyone has done something similar, please let me know :)

[bigH2O]

If they're going to lie about their age, there's nothing you can do about it. Short of meeting them face to face, checking their id, getting biometric information, and validating on that every time they hit your site, you're wasting waking moments worrying about it at all.

I don't know about your laws in South Africa, so I don't mean to disregard your concerns, but there's really nothing you can do other than ask and accept the information that your users provide. If you can be held liable for underage people participating on your board regardless of the truthfulness of the user's registration, then all I can say is don't put objectionable material on your forum.

[SoftDux]

I understand what you're saying, but since I'm just the developer, and the site will be run by my client, I need to know what options I have. Luckely the law here isn't as strict as in some other countries, but it really boils down to:

what would you think if you see you're 12 year old browsing a website? Before you investigate the matter, and how he got hold of it, you blame the site owner, which in turn can build bad publicity. Differently put, I don't think the models would want this either.

So, one way, which we thought of doing this, is requesting their 13 digit ID number, which is in the format: 801026xxxxxxxxx - Where the "80" resembles 1980, the "10" = 10th month, and the "26" = 26th day of the month - so the person in this case is 26 years, 5months and 10 days old (if my maths is correct).

Can this approach work? I realise this won't be fool proof, but if I could at least get it 80 - 90***37; fool proof, it would be great

[bigH2O]

Do you have a way of verifying the 13 digit id number? If so, sounds like you have the problem licked. If not, there's not going to be anything to prevent a 12 year old born in 05 from changing the first digit to a 9 to make himself appear to be 22.

All you can do is implement the most stringent registration procedures vbull offers, require birthdates, use COPPA registration (if it's available in international versions of vbull), etc. The more information you make them give you, the more places there are for them to slip up if they're trying to lie.

If you do get complaints from parents, all you have to do is tell them to register themselves so they can see how their little rug rat had to lie his butt off to have ever gotten to the "objectionable" material in the first place.

[SoftDux]

Do you have a way of verifying the 13 digit id number? If so, sounds like you have the problem licked. If not, there's not going to be anything to prevent a 12 year old born in 05 from changing the first digit to a 9 to make himself appear to be 22.

Well, not quite. But, since most people in our country only get their ID books at the age of 17+ they won't have valid ID numbers, and if they do very few would figure out the patern.

I think the trickier part is, how would I run a "check" on the ID numbers?

I could also check for another valid option, and that is that the next 4 numbers, after the birth date specify sex, for example 0001 - 4999 = female & 5000 - 9999 = male.

I realise this can be done with some simple PHP math coding, but I suppose I need to check this on the VB forums?

Do you offer a trail / moneyback, so that if it doesn'r work, I can "return" the licence?
Is it easy to change the domain it was purchased for? cause then I can test it on my own VB first, and see if it'll work

[Greg]

We do not offer refunds for trial and error circumstances to implement features not advertised.

It's 25 bucks, not 200 plus like some other galleries.

Moving to another domain is no big deal. We just ask that if you have multiple installs in use, that like vBulletin, you pay for a license for each site.

Thanks

[SoftDux]

25 X 7 = 175 bucks in my country. 175 bucks I could have used elsewhere if this script doesn't work the way we need it.

[Greg]

Than you better not buy it because I can't guarantee it will work with your idea.

Thanks