Can Your Plugin do this?

I’ve done some research and Ive found that what I need is pretty custom so I decided I would post it in here and get a direct answer instead of doing an endless search that seems to get me no where

Im trying to set up a membership site and am just wondering if what I’m trying to do is possible to automate it ALL.

Only three levels but it gets a bit complicated

1) Free (Guest)
2) Free Member
3) Paid Member

1) Free guest
They can come to the site, view the homepage, view the blog and any other content I deem viewable for anyone to see and explore.

2) Free Member
They can join for free and get access to pages where they can view videos, receive downloads and perks that guests wont have access to. I actually havent decided whether I want this part of the site to be in a forum or to be on a separate page. They also get access to the members only forum which Guests wont be able to view only Free members and paid members.

3) Paid Member (Monthly sub)
They will have access to video and training that is released once a month, they also have access to the forum and a special area on the forum that only the paid members can view and post in. I also want to be able to include perks like discounts on products that only they can get.

– So that part might seem the simplest but the it gets a bit more convoluted now. So Joe (member) signs up on day 1 of the site launching and has been paying a monthly sub for the last 3 months and he is happy. Lets say he’s paying $9 a month. Then Sally comes a long and thinks she likes what the site is doing and decides to pay the $9 monthly fee. But I don’t want Sally to have access to the last 3 months only the months going forward. But sally has an option to buy those last 3 months or any combination of for $9/video. Then Johnny comes along and doesnt want to be a member but sees a teaser video from the 1st monthly training video (that is part of the paid subscruiption) and he only wants to buy that. So Johnny has to pay $20 to watch that video. OR he can become a member for $9 and get that video for $9. Its just a way to get people to join as members. So effectively if he joined the monthly membership, he would get the video he initally wanted plus one month of training/video making it an obvious decision to join the monthly subscription.

– Then I also want to be able to block part of the forum so that only people who have paid to see videos those months will have access to the forum area that is designated for that month. They can discuss the video amongst themselves.

– Aweber integration – Im not exactly sure how this works but in order for someone to join my site they must be part of the mailing list. They can choose to unsubscribe at a later date but the chances of them opting after signing up are probably slim to none so I want to make it easy for them and just automatically sign then up when they join the site. So the goal would be for them to enter their information and then have aweber send a opt in form, they click Yes and THEN they are sent the login details with password etc. Is this how its done or is it even possible?

– Also I want the ability to increase the monthly membership with out affecting the current paid members. So lets say I have 100 people paying $9 a month and I want that exact same subscription to be $19 a month for future clients. However at the same time I want all the $9 members to be locked in and not be charged extra.

– If someone stops there paypal membership they would still maintain the FREE membership level and all of the content they paid for but wouldn’t have access to future content.

Anyways hopefully I am pretty clear as to what I need. I really just want the plugin to be able to do what I want (which is pretty custom). Instead of trying to bury my head through days of information to find out I figure I would just go to the source and ask them directly.

thanks.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Based on your requirements, I would say that s2Member can accomplish most of what you need.

You can enable free subscriptions here: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Open Registration

You will need to restrict access to your Posts which members can buy separately from your subscription with Custom Capabilities. You can sell access to these Custom Capabilities with Capability Buy Now Buttons here:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Capability (Buy Now) Buttons

To decide how much you will sell these capabilities for, you can check if the User is a s2Member Level 1 (or paid) subscriber to your site using Shortcode Conditionals. You want to charge $20 for non-subscribers to buy one of these posts, while subscribers would be charged $9. So you’d do something like the following:

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]
	This is where your $9 form goes
[/s2If]
[s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)]
	This is where your $20 form goes
[/s2If]

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Custom Capabilities
See Also: Knowledge Base » Simple Shortcode Conditionals

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For restricting access to your forums, you can use the Custom Capabilities that you’re selling in conjunction with s2Member’s Advanced PHP Conditionals and some custom code to decide when a User will not have access to a forum. This should be the only portion of your setup that requires custom code.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Advanced PHP Conditionals

For Aweber Integration, s2Member can automatically send a User an opt-in message when they sign up, but cannot check if they are already subscribed. For info on setting up Aweber with s2Member, see this Article:

Knowledge Base » AWeber Email Parser For s2Member