Members Area

This is a free and open source Members Area specifically targeted at Makerspaces/Hackspaces/Hackerspaces though also suitable for other community groups.

It's a ground-up rewrite of the original So Make It Members Area.

Project status

Work in progress, getting there.

Getting started

Install members-area software globally:

npm install -g members-area

Then create a new folder and initialise a new members are inside it:

mkdir myarea
cd myarea
members quickstart

After a period of time installing the various dependencies, setting up a SQLite database, installing the default plugins, etc the server will be up and running on localhost:1337.

In future you can run the members area with members run or npm start or, if you have installed CoffeeScript globally, coffee index.coffee.

You'll probably want to set up a mailgun (or similar) account so Nodemailer can send the registration emails for further users you register without them ending up in spam. Then in Core Settings, set:

• From address: Your Name <you@yourdomain>
• Service: mailgun
• Username: postmaster@yourdomain
• Password: PasswordFromMailgun

Contributing

For a really fast way to get up and running with developing for the members area, check out the bootstrap.sh file - simply download it somewhere and then run it. It runs under bash - contributions of a Windows equivalent welcome...

Once the script finishes running you'll have a folder MembersArea containing a checkout of the members-area itself and a number of plugins. There'll also be a folder called instance that contains a members-area instance since the members-area itself is just a node module and is not intended to run on it's own. You'll want to run ./watch.sh inside instance to monitor all the various modules for changes.

I've designed the members area to have a plugin architecture allowing for easy expansion. In fact many of the features that could have been core are implemented as plugins. You can easily contribute to the ecosystem by making a plugin to expand the functionality of the members area.

I want to keep the core pretty tight, simple and reliable; improvements to performance, security and other fixes are welcome, as are additional plugin hooks if well thought out, but if you plan on adding more functionality to core it may be worth having a chat first :)

Bootstrap

We use Bootstrap v3.3.6, if you wish to contribute, the documentation can be found there.