How do you do a members area? I dont even know where to begin
 

Im making my first site and I dont even know how to do the members area so that the customers will like it and its organized and easy for me to make updates everyday.
Are there members area templates for sale or anything?
I dont want to spend a ton of money on this, i just want something that works and looks good.
Is there software I should get to make updates and organize it all?

Check out some members areas of other sites, see what you think will work for your specific content.

If you buy software to do this, you will be spending a great deal of money.

We do ours manually.

Yea - just join some sites. See what they're doing. Then, rip them off. It's what most others do...lol

Script > Design > Content

In that order :) That's all you need to know.

If you need some help with your members area design layout, let me know and I'll be happy to help you out and give you some pointers free of charge. :)

Just make sure that you dont have the people chasing links. Most of the major sites, it is a cluster fuck of finding the photos.

For picture galleries try ulead photo explorer. it will make simple gallery pages and thumbnails from your full sized images. for movies just do it manually with a cap from the movie

buy a membership and see how other ppl do it