Evaluation questions

Hello there,

s2Members seems like a great WP plugin. I am in the process of evaluating several solutions for our membership site (currently under construction), and wanted to verify few issues before we buy:

Above the great support for multiple levels of full-site membership, does s2Members enable site users to buy access for a *SINGLE* page? As an example, a full site membership costs $29.99, is charged on a monthly basis, and enables access to all site content. However, some users prefer NOT to subscribe to a recurring membership. Rather they would like to purchase accesss to a specific content (wordpress page) that they like most, and pay for it *ONCE*. Once they do that they have lifetime access to this page (after they log in). Of course, users can purchase such access to multiple pages, thereby accumulating a “library” of pages they have access to. The site needs to block their access to any page that was not purchased in the fashion described above.

Does your plugin support this use case? If so, do you offer support for showing users all the pages they purchased (i.e. the “library”) and enables them to navigate to those pages?

Also – does the plugin offer support via shortcodes for the following:

1) Login button
2) Login form (customizable)
3) Signup button
4) Signup form (customizable)
5) User profile management page

Further, is there support via shortcodes for conditional display of page content? As an example, a page needs to show a subscribe button if a user is completely unsubscribed or not loged in. If the user is loged in, but a “free” subscriber – the page needs to show an “upgrade” button. If the user is loged in and “paid” subscriber – the page doesn’t need to show any button. Can this scenario be implemented with your plugin using shortcodes or very simple PHP inside the page?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Moty

Hi Moty.

Does your plugin support this use case? If so, do you offer support for showing users all the pages they purchased (i.e. the “library”) and enables them to navigate to those pages?

Yes, you can sell custom capabilities for those. Please watch this video: Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)

About the links to the pages the user has, you’d need to customize that yourself. You could use conditionals to check if the user has access to each of the pages, and show a link only when he does. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals[/hilite]

1) Login button
2) Login form (customizable)
3) Signup button
4) Signup form (customizable)
5) User profile management page

In s2Member Pro there are the Pro Login Widget via PHP, and the s2Member Pro Forms for registrations.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Pro Login Widget (via PHP)[/hilite]
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Free Registration Forms[/hilite]

What do you mean by profile management page? A custom one other than the deafult WP one? s2Member has one in the free version. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Member Profile Modifications[/hilite]

I hope that helps. :)

Thanks for your response, Christian.

As a follow up question regarding your suggestion of using custom capabilities. I already watched that video and thought about this option. However, my understanding was that custom capabilities could only be used for level 1 – meaning that users will have to be paying members in order to buy access to pages, which defeats my objective.

What I really need is a capability for “free” members (non-paying) to be able to purchase access to any page that is protected under membership restriction as a one off transaction, which grants them lifetime access to the pages they purchased. However, users MUST be able to purchase such access WITHOUT being paying subscribers (my plan was to use conditionals to display both “buy this page” AND “become a member” buttons if a level 0 subscriber is detected on a certain page).

In effect, this means that I need to be able to define custom capabilities for level zero, which I thought is not possible. Am I wrong about this?

Thanks for your help,

Moty

You can sell independent custom capabilities even to Level 0 users. [hilite path]WP Admin -> s2Member -> PayPal Buttons -> Capability Buttons[/hilite]

With s2Member, you can sell one or more Custom Capabilities using Buy Now functionality, to “existing” Users/Members, regardless of which Membership Level they have on your site ( i.e. you could even sell Independent Custom Capabilities to Users at Membership Level #0, normally referred to as Free Subscribers, if you like ).