The user-manager seems quite great - if you want to take money.

However, what I would like to do is provide a "Free" hotspot, using all of the features of usermanager/hotspot.

What I mean is rather than having an open AP that someone can just hook up to, DHCP, and go, I want to have an AP with the hotspot login page, that someone can click a link to "Create a free account", then use that free account to log in to the hotspot.

The end goal is so that the advertisement feature can be employed.

i tried and tried to find a way, but it forces payment and cannot be used free. we ended up ditching it because of that. created an external hotspot login page that basically clicked the Trial account login after collecting a few pieces of info.

Yes, currently such option is not available.
But we have plans to implement it.

I worked around this by changing the login page to have a "Continue to Internet" link that clicks the trial.

For future visitors to this thread: as nickb said, the easiest way of creating a free-hotspot system imho is to use the trial account.

If you need to impose data limits and speed limits this is easy to do using the user profiles and hotspot server profile.
You can even limit them to things like "1 hour usage each day" or "1 hour usage at 1024k/1024k connection speed" etc etc.

trial account is great.
May be i want strange, but i'd like to add every new mac-addr in user manager. I want to get statistic for each mac and so on. Is it possible?

You guys need to think outside the square a little here, this is easy to achieve when you put some thought into it.
Just have a webserver running some PHP or perl scripting and HTML pages to create accounts on the fly and import the account info into your usermanager box. You could automatically use the MAC address if you wanted, just grab it from the browser session. You could do this running usermanager on the hotspot or an external machine. We even have the option to SMS the username and password to new customers, it's really not that hard with some basic scripting knowledge and variables, and yes, you can do throttling, session management, and anything else you can do normally with hotspot user profiles and usermanager.

Regards
Paul

Hi,

Its not that hard. I would say dont even use Perl/PHP. This can be done using simple BASH scripts. I have recently provided a complete web-based user managemenet system for PPPoE to a Local client of about 700 users.

Not very difficult. Believe me, just generate SSH key and share it wil your MT machine, create a bash script that will add users, and thats it.

Free HotSpot is possible not only with Trial.
It is possible with regular HTTP and HTTPS, as login page can be modified and correct username/password are predefined at login page code.
User connects to the Internet, advertisement information (login page) appears, user click on Login and use the Internet.

mudasir: how did you create a web interface in BASH? I am using SSH with DSA key for login, everything works great there. I'd like to have a login page (hotspot login) then a "Click for free account" that asks for (email,name,phone,etc.), then when that get's submitted take all that info and insert into user manager. I know I can use PHP/Perl, but BASH sounded interesting (if I have the right idea here). I've also done many-a bash scripts as well.

I may be completely off, I apologize.

have Just added a Script

http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=99515

this works well for me

Free HotSpot is possible not only with Trial.
It is possible with regular HTTP and HTTPS, as login page can be modified and correct username/password are predefined at login page code.
User connects to the Internet, advertisement information (login page) appears, user click on Login and use the Internet.

Could you please provide some more information? I am able to create free hotspot with regular HTTP and HTTPS but the problem is that I am not able to set uptime limit for users.