Guest Purchasing and Membership Questions

Hello,

My team’s goal is to create a website that offers both free and purchasable digital content as well as allowing members access to pages they’ve bought access to and show the member, on the member page, what they
have access to. After looking at the other options out there we have a few pre-sale questions:

1) Will members on the same tier be able to purchase access to specific pages they pay for?
2) Does s2member have any options that can show customers which pages they have access to?
3) Does s2member handle guest AND member page purchases?
4) Is the built in WP member directory good enough to retain s2member customer info?
5) Are there any other membership databases that work out of the box with s2member besides Buddypress?
6) Is there a way to show certain members ads and pages we want them to see?
7) Can we use a normal front end header login plugin or does the pro version have one? (built in the header only)

There’s some things some of us might have missed as we’re trying it out.

Thank you for your inquiry.

1) Will members on the same tier be able to purchase access to specific pages they pay for?

Yes. Any member or nonmember can use Specific Post/Page Access Buttons/Pro Forms to buy access to a Post/Page, or you can sell this content with Custom Capabilities.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Specific Post/Page (Buy Now) Forms
See Also: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Capability (Buy Now) Forms

2) Does s2member have any options that can show customers which pages they have access to?

s2Member doesn’t have any specific functionality for this purpose, no. But s2Member does offer several API functions that would make setting this up much easier.

See: http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-summary/

3) Does s2member handle guest AND member page purchases?

No, s2Member currently does not have the capability to perform guest purchases. Sorry about that.

4) Is the built in WP member directory good enough to retain s2member customer info?

This is what all of s2Member’s installations use, and it works just fine for our users. It’s meant for holding data like this, so it should work fine. :-)

5) Are there any other membership databases that work out of the box with s2member besides Buddypress?

You can find all of our integrations here:

s2Member® » Pro » Features

6) Is there a way to show certain members ads and pages we want them to see?

You can use other plugins to achieve this, as s2Member integrates with the default WordPress Roles and Capabilities functionality, so it integrates smoothly with most other plugins in this regard. s2Member doesn’t have this capability out-of-box, though. You’ll have to set this up on your own.

7) Can we use a normal front end header login plugin or does the pro version have one? (built in the header only)

You can use a normal login form with s2Member. s2Member Pro does come with a login widget, but it’s meant to go into a sidebar.

Hello again,

My first question was a bit off base now that I’ve reread it.

If a Basic Member named Becky were to buy access to a page about health food and a page about weight loss, will she be able to view the SAME pages Hector, who’s also a Basic Member, who purchased information about dumbells and training information?

Also what do you use to keep track of who has access to what? I don’t know if i should be asking that, but i’m hoping to find a way to record purchased pages (via integrated database or possibly a ton of conditionals) and display them to users on their purchase history page. Being new to this and knowing what to ask of a freelancer is a bit more frustrating than i thought.

If a Basic Member named Becky were to buy access to a page about health food and a page about weight loss, will she be able to view the SAME pages Hector, who’s also a Basic Member, who purchased information about dumbells and training information?

It depends on what you use to restrict access to these Pages. Since you have many different pieces of content I would suggest using s2Member’s Custom Capabilities. This video goes over what Custom Capabilities are:

Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)

You shouldn’t need to watch all of the videos in this playlist, or even really all of the first video to get an understanding of what they are.