invite_registration

This is a fairly simple invite-only backend for user-registration, designed to make private beta and user signups through invitation as painless as possible.

Overview

This reusable Django applications provides many useful things to a site under private (closed) beta:

• A form that allows users to enter their email address so that you can send them an invite or a site launch notification later.

• A middleware that locks the site down for non-logged in users. If you control account creation this is a very effective way of limiting a site to beta testers only.

• A user invitation workflow:

  1. User fills out an invitation form, entering an email address.
  2. An invitation code is created and sent to the email address.
  3. User is able to register in with the invitation code and begin contributing to your site.
  4. The new user has a quota restrictions.

Various methods of extending and customizing the invitation process are also provided.

Installation

In order to use invite-registration, you will need to have a functioning installation of Django 1.0 or newer; you will need user-registration (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-registration/)

To use the invite form, you first need to add invite_registration to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings file::

INSTALLED_APPS = (
...
'invite_registration',
)

You will also need to add ::

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
    (r'^invite/', include('invite_registration.urls')),
    (r'^accounts/', include('invite_registration.backends.invite_only.urls')),
)

Add the setting INVITE_INITIAL_NUMBER_INVITATIONS to your settings file; this should be the initial quota each new user has.

Create the necessary templates for user-registration Create the necessary templates for invite-registration :

• invite_registration/invitation_form.html
• invite_registration/invitation_email_subject.txt is used for the subject of the invitation email.
• invite_registration/invitation_email.txt is used for the body of the invitation email.

Examples of all of these templates are not provided; you will need to create them yourself.

Email Auth Backend

If you would like to allow users to log-in with their email address, set/add EmailAuthBackend as/to your authentication backend:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
	...
	'emailusernames.backends.EmailAuthBackend',
)

Closed beta middleware

If you would also like to prevent non-logged-in users from viewing your site, you can make use of invite_registration.middleware.PrivateBetaMiddleware. This middleware redirects all views to a specified location if a user is not logged in.

To use the middleware, add it to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSSES in your settings file::

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    ...
    'invite_registration.middleware.PrivateBetaMiddleware',
)

There are a few settings that influence behavior of the middleware:

NEVER_ALLOW_VIEWS A list of full view names that should never be displayed. This list is checked before the others so that this middleware exhibits deny then allow behavior.

ALWAYS_ALLOW_VIEWS A list of full view names that should always pass through.

ALWAYS_ALLOW_MODULES A list of modules that should always pass through. All views in django.contrib.auth.views, django.views.static and privatebeta.views will pass through unless they are explicitly prohibited in PRIVATEBETA_NEVER_ALLOW_VIEWS

REDIRECT_URL The URL to redirect to. Can be relative or absolute.