CMS recommendations for paid gallery access?

September 3, 2008 9:25 AM

A friend has asked for my help designing a site to sell access to photo galleries and videos (yes, porn). The way he'd like it to work is this: on the main page, you see a list of models. You click one and see that model's available galleries and videos, with some sample images and video clips. You then purchase (via credit card) access to the galleries and videos you want, rather than the usual porn subscription model. Can anyone recommend a CMS for this sort of thing? I'm at a loss.
posted by Acetylene to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I did this for a period of time, sort of. My model was, you purchased "credits" with paypal or a credit card, and you spent credits by making downloads. No subscribtions or extra costs. It was not really a great money maker, and if you're not using original content (i.e. you're re-distributing copyrighted material) you WILL get found and harassed. Just FYI.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:28 AM on September 3, 2008

Oh, and I rolled my own. Not that hard to do if you can program...
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:29 AM on September 3, 2008

Like Rusty, I rolled my own back in the day. It isn't hard to do, especially if you're limiting access on a per-gallery basis. I don't think there's a Porn In the Box CMS even today, but any number of CMSs could be modified to this schema. Drupal comes to mind. I'm pretty sure I can think of a way to do it with WordPress, even. Seriously. This stuff isn't rocket science.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:44 AM on September 3, 2008

People still pay for porn? I thought that business model died with the creation of Redtube, Youporn, etc. Not to rain on his parade but it may not be worth his time.
posted by Mr_Zero at 10:09 AM on September 3, 2008

In my (somewhat dated) experience, collecting money on (an amateurish) porn site is hardest part of getting up and running (besides getting content of course). Many of the adult payment processors work by FTPing a user/password file on your server which is linked to a .htaccess file on the protected directories. Conversely most CMS's have their own (database controlled aka not .htacess) login system. Ideally, you or your friend have the resources to get your own Merchant Account, but that can be hard if you're not a professional pron monger. So, you may want to figure out how you will be collecting money before you begin making implementation decisions. (PayPal is not a legimate option for a porn site, but there are copycats out there.)
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 10:13 AM on September 3, 2008

Of course people still pay for porn. Yes, there is tons of stuff freely available out there but people often don't really know how to get it. Redtube, Youporn, etc, mostly have pretty crappy stuff.

When I was doing it, we catered to things that (at the time) were not that commonly available. You're going to have trouble with anything garden-variety. There are 2 potential roadblocks here:
* it's your content - in this case you're going to have a hard time selling it, what makes it different or better than what's out there?
* it's not your content - if it's any good or popular the copyright owner will be all over you.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:27 AM on September 3, 2008

Response by poster: To clarify: while I appreciate the comments about how difficult it will be to make money with this, that part really isn't my concern. My involvement ends with the technical setup. The marketing and copyright issues are my friend's problems, not mine.
posted by Acetylene at 12:09 PM on September 3, 2008