Magento creating new customer page - magento

Question

Ok i cant figure this out at all. I have searched and i cant find anything either. Whats the best way to add a new page to the account section. I am trying to integrate a support ticket system into a magento account page i.e. so the user must be logged in and registered to use this feature. i can get this to work using a cms page and custom page layout. but then how do i set this custom cms page to only work for logged in users?
Also doing it this way this is showing the category menu and not the account menu. How can i get the my account menu to show instead? or is there a better way of doing this? Im new to magento and im really stuck and cant figure this out so any help would be appreciated.
Im running magento 1.7.0.2 community edition.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, just check to see if the customer is logged in, but in order to use PHP you're going to have to use the teplating system and create a module, or generate your own "stand alone page" If you go the module route:
if ($this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn()){
//show page contents or do whatever ..
}
else{
header( 'Location: http://www.yoursite.com/customer/account/login/' ) ;
}
is all you'll need. IF you go the stand alone route:
//LOAD MAGENTO
require_once 'YOUR_PATH_TO_MAGENTO/app/Mage.php';
umask(0);
Mage::app('YOUR_WEBSITE_CODE', 'website');
//GET SESSION DATA
Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name'=>'frontend'));
$session = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session', array('name'=>'frontend'));
$customer_data = Mage::getModel('customer/customer')->$session->id);
//CHECK IF LOGGED IN
if($session->isLoggedIn()){
echo 'Welcome ' . $customer_data->firstname . " " . $customer_data->lastname;
} else {
echo "Access Denied: Sorry, but this page is for registered members only.";
exit;
}
Hope that helps

Answer 2

For any action there is a controller and action function.
So for your new feature you define an action.Make sure this action value is in URL.
Now within your controller add this action function
myAction()
{
if ($this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn()){
//show page contents or do whatever ..
}
else{
header( 'Location: http://www.yoursite.com/customer/account/login/' ) ;
}
}

Answer 3

Although both of the answers above might have sufficed for the question posted, just for a note, it is surely not the correct way to work with Magento, a better understanding of how this can be achieved in the way according to magento practices, I think this tutorial from Alan Stormis a great place, however there is some problem with the preDispatch method in that blog, for which I think it might be better alternative:
public function preDispatch() {
parent::preDispatch();
if (!Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->authenticate($this)) {
$this->setFlag('', 'no-dispatch', true);
}
}
Which I got from here.
In Alan's blog, If a customer is already logged in and try to go the custom account page, he is redirected to the homepage(It did in my case.)