Is this functionality available?

Hi guys,

First of all, this system looks awesome. Great work!

s2member is the closest we’ve found to what we need, but I just need to make sure it can do something which is quite important for us.

In a nutshell, our site will be one big video course.

It will have 7 chapters (categories), and within each chapter there will be roughly 20 video lessons (pages).

We need our customers to be able to pick and choose which videos and/or chapters they want access to.

They will pay a one lifetime fee per video or chapter (no subscription/membership) and they will always have access to the videos/chapters they have paid for.

For example,

• Customer A (simple) may buy the complete course (All chapters 1-7).
• Customer B (moderate) may buy the complete chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Therefore he won’t have access to the remaining chapter 7.
• Customer C (complex) may buy 6 video lessons from chapter 1, and 3 video lessons from chapter 4, and then buy the complete chapters 5 and 6. Therefore he won’t have access to the remaining 14 video lessons in chapter 1, or the remaining 17 video lessons in chapter 4, or the complete chapters 2, 3 and 7.

Customers like B and C who decide to buy a few lessons/chapters first need to be able to buy more lessons/chapters as and when they feel like it.

The reason our course needs to be like this is because some of our customers will already have some knowledge on the subject, and therefore it wont be in their interest to purchase the complete course, or specific “beginner” chapters.

I hope this makes sense, please let me know if you need any more clarification.. and thanks so much for your help!

Speak soon

Lee

Thank-you for your great question.

s2Member is fully capable of handling this functionality with Custom Capabilities. If you already have the s2Member Framework installed, you should be able to find additional info at Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Custom Capabilities.

The way you use these Custom Capabilities depends on the way you’d like to package your videos, and how your videos are being displayed. You can sell as little or as many Custom Capabilities as you’d like with s2Member’s Pro Forms.

Understanding Custom Capabilities

Setting up your custom capabilities is pretty simple. Each video should have a custom capability that is unique to it. As stated in the documentation, custom capabilities support lower-case, alpha-numerics. Therefore, your custom capabilities may be assigned by category, then video number. For instance, you may have a video in the category “Working with Photoshop”. It’s the 3rd video in the category, so the video that you’re selling requires the capability video_photoshop_3.

If you’d like to “package” these custom capabilities, you can do so. However, this requires a hack that you can find info on here: Knowledge Base » Changing Roles/Capabilities via PHP.

Using These Capabilities

Assuming you are using s2Member’s Download Restrctions (in your Dashboard, under Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Download Options -› Basic Download Restrictions), you can use the Advanced Download Options to give users no-questions-asked access to videos (remember to still set up Basic Download Restrictions, though).

With this in mind, and your custom capabilities set up, you can now decide when to display certain videos.

If you’d like to put each video on a different post/page, you can use the post meta box that s2Member creates at the top right of the Add/Edit Post page.

Otherwise, you’ll want to use the info provided under Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals to protect these videos with your Login Welcome Page (a page that needs to be set up for s2Member to work properly).

An example of what one of these might looks like:

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_ccap_videos_photoshop_3)]
Display the video here, if the user can access it.
[/s2If]

Well, Bruce… in that case, s2member is absolutely awesome!

I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and with really useful information.

I’ll be sure to grab a copy of s2member pro!

Speak soon

Lee