This is my first time to do a project having many users - university students.
My project is all about record filing on student profile.
Means that student will come to my website and sign up their yearly information update.
Now my dilemma is that, do I need to make a username and password for them? individually?
what are the possible approach for that.
Usually, you would have a database with users that you can check new registrations against. New users would come in and create there passwords and confirmed email accounts, this way the account would be created automatically.
Yes exactly, you could require basic info like ID and name to match your records for valid registration. If your users are existing students you could also require that they use school email address for validation purposes which would increase level of security during account signup.
You could use their email address as their usernames. Just like in some registration sites. But what I’m worried about this is that if someone is looking behind their backs, that someone sees their email addresses being typed and may use that to communicate (via email) to them or send something nasty (like email viruses). But it’s all up to you.
I suggest let them type their own passwords. They must confirm their registration in their respective email accounts. If they forget their usernames and/or passwords, give them the option to recover the data. You can show their registered usernames and passwords in your email messages.