PinGate Documentation

PinGate adds a Registration PIN field to your sign-up form. Nobody can create an account without a valid PIN, and you decide who gets one. Members who already have an account sign in as usual.

Highlights

• PIN manager – create your own PINs or up to 100 random PINs at a time, and turn any of them on or off.
• Limits – total sign-ups, sign-ups per day, a start date and an expiry date for each PIN, plus daily limits for the whole site.
• No way around it – the check runs on the server for the sign-up form, social sign-up and the API.
• Protection against guessing – too many wrong PINs locks that IP address for a while.
• Activity – see who registered with which PIN, wrong attempts and lockouts.
• Built for Nova – the field matches every Nova sign-up design, in light and dark mode, on phone and desktop.

Perfect For

• Private betas and invite-only launches
• Company, school and club communities
• Partners and campaigns, each with their own PIN and limit
• Stopping waves of fake sign-ups

• Sngine 5 with the Nova theme. Other themes are not supported.
• PHP 8 or newer.
• Access to phpMyAdmin or MySQL to import one file.
• SSH or a hosting Terminal for one command. No SSH? A one-time Cron Job works too.

The same steps are in How to install PinGate.txt inside the package. Documentation.html in the package and the Documentation button in AdminCP › PinGate both open this page.

1. Upload 2. Database 3. Connect 4. PINs 5. Turn on 6. Check

Step 1 – Upload the files

Unzip PinGate-for-sngine.zip. Upload everything inside the upload/ folder to your Sngine root (the folder that contains admin.php), keeping the folder structure. Do not upload the upload folder itself.

includes/pingate.php
includes/pingate/admin.php
includes/pingate/install.sql
includes/pingate/patch.php
includes/ajax/admin/pingate.php
content/themes/nova/templates/admin.pingate.tpl

Step 2 – Import the database

1. Open phpMyAdmin and select your Sngine database.
2. Go to Import and choose includes/pingate/install.sql.
3. Click Go.

It adds the PinGate tables and default settings. It does not touch your members or content, and it is safe to run more than once.

mysql -u DBUSER -p DBNAME < includes/pingate/install.sql

Step 3 – Connect PinGate to Sngine (required)

Do not skip this step. Uploading the files and importing the database is not enough. Until you run this tool, AdminCP › PinGate shows "You don't have the right permission to access this", even for an administrator.

A small tool adds the AdminCP page and menu link, the PIN check and the PIN field. It checks every file first, keeps a backup of each changed file in content/backups/pingate/ and clears the template cache.

With SSH or your hosting Terminal, from your Sngine root:

php includes/pingate/patch.php --check
php includes/pingate/patch.php

The first command only previews: every line should say PENDING or OK. The second applies: every line should say PATCHED or OK, then "Done." A file that says FAILED is not changed.

No SSH? Add a Cron Job in your hosting panel that runs every minute:

php /full/path/to/your/sngine/includes/pingate/patch.php > /full/path/to/your/sngine/content/backups/pingate-result.txt 2>&1

Wait two minutes and delete the Cron Job. Open content/backups/pingate-result.txt: it should end with "Done." Then delete that file.

The tool can't be opened from a web browser, and running it again is safe.

Step 4 – Create your PINs

1. Open AdminCP › PinGate.
2. Under Add PINs, enter a name, for example "Beta testers".
3. Type your own PIN (4 to 64 characters; capital letters count), or leave it empty and choose how many random PINs to create.
4. Optional: set limits.
5. Press Add PINs, then copy your new PINs. They are shown only this once.

Step 5 – Turn it on

1. Open AdminCP › PinGate › Settings.
2. Switch on Require a PIN to register.
3. Optional: add help text, for example where people can ask for a PIN.
4. Press Save Changes.

PinGate stays off until you do this. See Enabled / Disabled.

Step 6 – Check that it works

1. Open your site's /signup page in a private (incognito) window. You should see the Registration PIN field.
2. Fill in the form with a wrong PIN and press Sign Up. If more fields appear (Sngine shows them after the first press), fill them in and press Sign Up again. You should see "The registration PIN is not correct".
3. Do the same with a correct PIN. The account is created as usual.
4. Open AdminCP › PinGate › Activity. The new member is listed with the PIN used.

One switch controls everything: AdminCP › PinGate › Settings › Require a PIN to register. PinGate is disabled after installation. The banner at the top of every PinGate page always shows the current state.

Everything PinGate 1.0 does, at a glance.

AdminCP › PinGate lists every PIN with its name, its last 2 characters, status and limits.

PIN status

Edit, turn off, delete

• Turn off / Turn on – one click in the list.
• Edit – change the name and limits at any time. The PIN itself can't be changed: create a new one instead.
• Delete – on the Edit page, tick the box and press Delete. This removes the PIN and its sign-up history. Members who registered with it keep their accounts.

AdminCP › PinGate › Activity shows the latest 50 sign-ups and wrong PIN attempts. Clear all and unlock removes all lockouts at once.

The PIN field is the first field on the form, styled to match your Nova sign-up design. Your help text appears right under it.

Messages people can see

PinGate's texts are in English. To translate them, add them to your language's translation file in content/languages/locale/, the same way as other Sngine texts.

While PinGate is enabled, an app that registers through the Sngine API must send the PIN in the pingate_pin field with the other sign-up fields, or the sign-up is refused.

POST /apis/php/auth/signup
pingate_pin=YOUR-PIN

To stop using it: switch off Require a PIN to register and save. Registration works as before.

To remove it completely:

1. Restore the original Sngine files from content/backups/pingate/. Each backup's name shows where it belongs and when it was made, with __ in place of /.
2. Delete the files you uploaded in Step 1.
3. In phpMyAdmin, delete the tables pingate_secret, pingate_pins, pingate_uses and pingate_attempts.

All notable changes to PinGate, newest first.

Quick answers to the most common questions about PinGate.