I'd just like to know since I haven't looked into this area yet, are developers using existing membership site software or are they coding their own? Also if people are coding their own how are they going about creating security? Thanks to anyone who can answer this for me.
It depends on the project but it is a common practice to use third party code such as jQuery plugins etc. I personally develop my websites in PHP framework of Codeigiter its a bit difficult at the beginning but once you switch to it you won't even look at the old ways of coding the web applications.