Is this possible with S2member?

I have to know this before I decide to pay or instal free plugin. Please provide as detailed answer as possible.

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SCENARIO

S2Member should be installed and activated on WordPress Multisite’s main domain, but not on subdomain/subdirectories sites, because I’ve heard that S2M’s members, plugin settings and other, cannot be shared network wide.

Admins/owners of child blogs/sites will provide services to our members and will also have shops with downloadable digital content. Other content they provide will be hidden from unregistered users (with free WP-Members plugin which is much easier to setup on per blog basis). Registered users from the main site will have access to content of all child blogs/sites and will be automatically added to their sites the first time they visit those child sites/blogs. Their membership level from the main site is not important as long as they are registered. So we have that covered with the help of 3rd party plugin cause, as I’ve heard, S2M can’t do that.

Anyway, site/blog (example.com/site1) owners/admins will also be affiliates of our main site (example.com) and because of that they will have banners placed on their sites. Every time someone (by clicking on a banner placed on child blog site) signs up for premium membership plan on the main site, where S2Member is installed, child site/blog owner/admin gets his cut. We want to allow recurring payment which means that every time someone’s premium membership plan gets extended, site admins/owners of our child blogs/sites who will get new payment.

Here are some additional questions:

1. What Affiliate solution you suggest to use so we can track from which child site/blogs did new premium member came from? Plugin or something. Please don’t say iDev or ShareASale because it is way too complicated for us to maintain another web service account.

2. Can we force our visitors to use coupons or some other code before their register to our site? For example, if there isn’t an affiliate solution that would work in this situation we would assign a coupon code to every child blog/site owner/admin so whenever someone gets forwarded from their site to main site he would have to use that coupon code to register. That way we would know which new member’s payment we should split with the particular site admin.

3. Maybe this has nothing to do S2M but I’ll ask anyway. As I’ve mentioned above, site admins would also sell digital downloads. Is there a way to track those sales so we can split payed amount between site admin and us? Is there a shopping system that works well with S2M?

4. Do you have any other suggestion on how to setup this kind of website?

Thanks in advance,
Zets

Hi Zets,

There are several features you describe that can be achieved with s2Member (coupon codes, premium memberships, recurring payments, selling digital downloads), however there are many features that your scenario would require lots of custom coding and/or integration with other plugins to achieve (both of which we do not support).

1. What Affiliate solution you suggest to use so we can track from which child site/blogs did new premium member came from? Plugin or something. Please don’t say iDev or ShareASale because it is way too complicated for us to maintain another web service account.

s2Member does not have any built-in affiliate system, but we do support iDevAffiliate and ShareASale. Your scenario sounds like it involves heavy integration between the membership plugin on the main site, an affiliate system, and possibly other plugins on the sub-sites. In this case, s2Member would not be an all-in-one solution for your scenario.

2. Can we force our visitors to use coupons or some other code before their register to our site? For example, if there isn’t an affiliate solution that would work in this situation we would assign a coupon code to every child blog/site owner/admin so whenever someone gets forwarded from their site to main site he would have to use that coupon code to register. That way we would know which new member’s payment we should split with the particular site admin.

It’s not currently possible to ‘force’ the usage of a coupon during registration. Also, the integration between the coupon and the making of the correct affiliate payment to the sub-site admin would require custom integration with whatever affiliate software makes those payments.

3. Maybe this has nothing to do S2M but I’ll ask anyway. As I’ve mentioned above, site admins would also sell digital downloads. Is there a way to track those sales so we can split payed amount between site admin and us? Is there a shopping system that works well with S2M?

s2Member allows the sale of digital downloads through the sale of Specific Pages/Posts (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Specific Post/Page (Buy Now) Buttons) and you can use the s2Member Tracking API (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Tracking) to alert a 3rd-party system (such as an affiliate system; we support iDevAffiliate and ShareASale) about those transactions.

Again, s2Member is not an affiliate system, so the splitting of payments and payments to affiliates would need to be handled elsewhere.

4. Do you have any other suggestion on how to setup this kind of website?

Based on your requirements it sounds like you need more of an affiliate system than a membership system. As you’re already aware, s2Member isn’t designed to restrict access to content on sub-domains (due to the way WordPress Multisite works, there is no heavy integration between sub-sites).

Hey Raam,

Thanks for such detailed info. Hmmm… maybee S2M is not perfect for what we need but I definitely like the level of profesionalism you offer here.

Yes, we do need membership plugin. As well as good affiliate solution. I’m not ready to give up on S2M so please answer these few more questions:

1. So you’re saying that we can sell products with S2M via PayPal button. This is also true for downloadable/digital content. Can you explain how it works? Are products listed in tables? Can we track what products are sold and how many copies inside S2M administration?

2. Can S2M help us protect video stream from downloading with programs like Real Player and similar programs that people use for downloading video files?

3. I’m sure that I’ve red somewhere on your site that S2M supports recurring payment for affiliates. If this is true, can you please provide more info on how this works?

4. About S2M/bbPress/BuddyPress integration. I gues those plugs have to be instaled where S2M is and not on subdomain/subdirectory. But what if we activate S2M on child blog/site together with those two plugins? Will their integration be possible?

Thanks,
Zets

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Marko Prpic.

Hi Zets,

Please see below:

1. So you’re saying that we can sell products with S2M via PayPal button. This is also true for downloadable/digital content. Can you explain how it works? Are products listed in tables? Can we track what products are sold and how many copies inside S2M administration?

s2Member can sell downloadable/digital content through the sale of Specific WordPress Posts/Pages. You provide the download link on a specific WordPress post/page (s2Member can protect downloads from being reused as well) and then visitors can purchase those posts/pages. After they’ve made the payment, they will receive an email with a special URL that gives them limited access to that post/page (depending on what access you’ve defined).

While s2Member has many shopping cart features, it’s designed as a membership plugin for WordPress. There are no separate tables for products and it’s not possible to track within s2Member how many products were sold. We’re working on improving this functionality in the next major release of the plugin.

2. Can S2M help us protect video stream from downloading with programs like Real Player and similar programs that people use for downloading video files?

s2Member supports real-time streaming through Flash along with several fallback options if the real-time streaming doesn’t work for the visitor. If you force real-time streaming and leave out the fallback options, you can prevent people from downloading the videos. Please see Video » s2Member® File Downloads (Amazon S3/CloudFront/JW Player) for more details.

3. I’m sure that I’ve red somewhere on your site that S2M supports recurring payment for affiliates. If this is true, can you please provide more info on how this works?

s2Member supports recurring payments, yes, but s2Member does not have an affiliate system. The recurring payments option is designed for members who signup through s2Member for access to some content on the site.

4. About S2M/bbPress/BuddyPress integration. I gues those plugs have to be instaled where S2M is and not on subdomain/subdirectory. But what if we activate S2M on child blog/site together with those two plugins? Will their integration be possible?

While s2Member is compatible with WordPress Multisite Networking, the sites within a WordPress network are separate and not interconnected. That means you cannot share users, logins, or other data across the sites.

Please see the following from WordPress.org:

The sites in a multisite network are separate, very like the separate blogs at WordPress.com. They are not interconnected like things in other kinds of networks (even though plugins can create various kinds of interconnections between the sites). If you plan on creating sites that are strongly interconnected, that share data, or share users, then a multisite network might not be the best solution.

The s2Member Multisite feature allows you to offer the s2Member plugin to sub-sites, giving your sub-sites the ability to setup and use s2Member on their own. Things like access restrictions on one domain are not shared across domains (again, the WordPress Multisite feature itself isn’t designed to work like that). When you upgrade s2Member on the primary site, the s2Member plugin is automatically updated for all your sub-sites.

Since the s2Member plugin availability is extended to the sub-sites, and the plugin on each site would operate independently from each other, you’d need to install bbPress/BuddyPress separately on each of the sub-sites and then integrate it with s2Member.

Thanks a lot. Great support on this website. Keep up the good work.

You’re most welcome! Thank you for the KUDOS, Zets! :)