Drip feed content (with complications!)

Hi,

I am trying to set up a premium membership website where we will teach video lessons (in woodworking). My idea is to have the lessons (one per week) drip to the users in seven day increments from the day they sign up. I think I can work out how to do this. BUT it gets more complicated.

The lessons will be divided into series of lessons that will last 2-4 months. I need members to have lifetime access to the past lessons but people who sign up to begin not with the first series but with the current series.

An example:

The first project we are going to teach is a small clock. This will take two months of weekly videos to teach. If someone signs up in the third week I want them to start with only the first video. After two months we will release the first lesson of the second series, a rocking chair. If the person who signed up for the clock series in week three keeps up their payments then I would like them to be able to access the first rocking chair episode three weeks after it is released and still have access to all past (clock) episodes. However, if someone signs up in week one of the rocking chair I want them to have access straight away to the first episode of the rocking chair but no access to the clock.

My thinking is that I can set up a separate page for past projects where people can buy access.

Is all this possible with s2member? Please can you point me in the right direction?

Thank you in advance.

Hi Joseph,

You’ll need to make heavy use of Custom Capabilities to have this level of control over who sees what. You’ll basically give each of your courses a specific Custom Capability (e.g., clock, rockingchair, etc.). Then, after restricting the relevant content to each Custom Capability, you can use the s2Member conditionals to check if the person viewing the page has a specific Custom Capability (this is addition to any other conditionals that you use for content dripping — they would work in conjunction to create the specific access that you want to provide).

This is a rather advanced usage of s2Member, but it’s most certainly possible and there are other s2Member customers using s2Member with this same course-type model. I recommend watching the Custom Capabilities video linked above and then reviewing the various conditionals you have access to in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Advanced PHP Conditionals, especially the ones related to Custom Capabilities. These can be combined with any other conditionals you may use for content dripping.

Raam,

Thank you for your kind reply. I think I have a bit more clarity on this whole thing. I have watched the videos on custom capabilities and feel confident that I can give people conditional access to past projects. Thanks!

However, I still am not clear if there is a way to do the rest of what I want to do. Please could you point me in the right direction?

Here is what I need to be able to do.

For the sake of simplicity for the customer and, hopefully, continuous custom, I would like users to be able to access my content for a simple recurring $15.00 fee. However, I do not want them to get more than they pay for. So, if someone signs up today they will pay $15.00 a month forever and get access to all content which I will release on a weekly basis. But, what happens if someone signs up in six months time? On a broad level you solved this for me by making each project a custom capability that is added to customers who paid for it in the past but would be available as a one time purchase for new subscribers.

But what if they sign up part way through a current project? So, I could drip content but if I set it up with a timestamp and say episode 2 to level1 7 days after payment. What happens to the guy that subscribed six months ago?

I want a system that is fair to everyone and people only get what they pay for. Has this been covered before? Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks once again for your time.

Joseph,

There are all kinds of ways you can write the conditionals. I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re asking about people signing up halfway. Could you please give me a clearer example, perhaps walking me through in more detail?

Thanks for your reply. I think I need work out what I need to achieve first and I will ask again if I can get some clarity in my own mind.

Please answer this however. How can I add custom capabilities to existing members? Is there a way to add them in bulk (to hundreds of members)? Also, I thought I could bulk export to a csv and add the ccaps that way but I am faced with the problem described here.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Joseph,

Yes, you will need to use the import/export feature to bulk-update Custom Capabilities. The easiest way would be to give an existing user the set of Custom Capabilities that you want everyone to have, then run an export and copy the Custom Capabilities field from that user and paste it into the rows for all the other users.

Regarding the garbled export file, please see this thread.