Evaluating s2Member

Hi, we are an indie computer game company and am looking into a solution that fits our needs. After much research and reading, we found that s2Member is one of the most recommended membership system for wordpress. However I needed to confirm that s2Member will work for our use case before delving more time into this.

We own a few domains for our games. However, we wanted a centralized user system which all of the different game websites will share. Players will sign up through our company main site(for free) which gives them the ability to purchase a “membership” for the game they want to play. This will grant them access to the game site’s forum and the game itself.

I do understand that we can some what share multiple sites with one wordpress install using the wordpress multi-site feature. However what I’m not sure about is how s2Member handles membership across multiple sites. Base on what is written in the feature comparison list, it is stated that:

Compatible with WordPress® Multisite Networking (optional). *Note: Users/Members are NOT shared across the Network. Each child blog or sub-site in a Network runs its own instance of s2Member®.

Does this mean that s2Member does not cater for our needs?

• This topic was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by  Eduan. Reason: Moved to the "Pre-Sale Questions" forum

Hi, it would be great if we could get some response to our question. We want to be able to move on to look for alternatives if s2Member will not fit our needs. At the moment, s2Member seems like our best bet yet.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there. Thanks for your inquiry.

Users/Members are NOT shared across the Network. Each child blog or sub-site in a Network runs its own instance of s2Member®.

Yes, that is correct. Each Child Blog within a Network has it’s own instance of s2Member, so it’s not going to work in the scenario that you laid out. While this type of installation is not currently supported by s2Member, we do have clients working around this issue through existing functionality within WordPress, which can test a Customer’s permissions on the Main Site.

In other words, you might have s2Member installed only on your Main Site, and you grant all sorts of access there. If you need to grant permission to something on a Child Blog, test permissions on the Main Site from other Child Blogs using one of these functions.

Here are some functions that I would recommend to you.
http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-functions/#src_doc_current_user_is_for_blog()
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/current_user_can_for_blog

For example, on a Child Blog, you might have something like this:

<?php
if(current_user_can_for_blog(1, "access_s2member_level1"))
	{
		echo 'You are a paid Member of our Main Site.';
	}
?>

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Jason (Lead Developer).