Need to know if this is possible before I buy

NOTE: I’ve posted this in the free forum but nobody has answered and urgently need an answer.

I’m new to s2member and I’m using the wordpress theme OptimizePress to produce an free online training website for my companies customers and partners.

I need to upload training content for the following user types:

customers
reseller partners
premium reseller partners
internal staff

So I thought it would be logical to set these as the membership levels as I don’t want customers to see the same content as the reseller & premium reseller partners or the staff, I also don’t want the customers, reseller & premium reseller partners to see specific content for our staff.

We don’t want to charge for any of this access. So in effect they will all be free members.
But how do I allow them to register without using Paypal?
NB: I will manually register staff level membership users.

What I’m looking for is input on the best way to allow for each type of member to register on their own.
(i.e. So I can avoid having to manual sign all members up – probably over 1000 users)

Also I read a review on another website that stated that a flaw in s2member is that even if I got the solutions above to work, the additional menu items would still show up. i.e. the Custom Capabilities don’t hide the areas of the website that a user does not have access to. Is this the case or can entire menu items be hidden?

___________________________________________________________________
Finally if this is not possible. I would like to allow 1 registration that just sign’s up customers and I will have to manually add all of our resellers into the system manually.

UPDATE:
I just watched this video which seems to point towards the answer I’m looking for.
http://www.s2member.com/videos/A2C07377CF60025E/
However I can’t use the paypal button generator as I’m not charging for any of my membership levels/custom capabilities.

^^^ Potential Pro Customer
I’ve posted in here and Community questions forum. Still no response.
Will need to look at WooTheme’s shortly as I have to get started on this project asap.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Sorry about the delay. We get to threads as they come in. We had to work down to yours. Sorry about that.

I need to upload training content for the following user types:

customers
reseller partners
premium reseller partners
internal staff

We don’t want to charge for any of this access. So in effect they will all be free members.
But how do I allow them to register without using Paypal?

You’re on the right track with Custom Capabilities. You’ll want to have 4 separate Custom Capabilities for these levels, as they have separate content. You can give access to these Custom Capabilities using Free Registration Pro Forms (with s2Member Pro):

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Free Registration Forms

These forms allow you to give access to specific Membership Levels, or Custom Capabilities for free, and you can also set End of Term dates for these Users, if you only want them to have temporary access to these.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for getting back to me.
So from your answer, my understanding of custom capabilities and my scenario can you confirm that this is what I would need to do:

1. Upgrade to s2Member Pro
2. Setup Custom Capability Packages for each of the users (Customers, Resellers, Pro Resellers, Staff)
3. Setup 4 Free registration forms attaching the relevant CC package to each form.
4. Create 4 signup pages to host these subscription forms i.e.
http://www.mysite.com/customerregistrations
http://www.mysite.com/resellerregistrations
http://www.mysite.com/resellerproregistrations
http://www.mysite.com/staffregistrations

5. Email the relevant people with the link to their own registration page.

So from your answer, my understanding of custom capabilities and my scenario can you confirm that this is what I would need to do:

Yep, that looks right. It’s pretty simple to set up, if you want to set up your Custom Capabilities before you purchase s2Member Pro to make sure everything will fit together right, that’s just fine, too. The thing you need s2Member Pro for here is to allow Users to get these Custom Capabilities for free. :-)

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your help.
I’ve followed this process and it’s working a treat.

I’ve followed this process and it’s working a treat.

Cool. Let us know if you have any more problems.

And thanks for your purchase. :-)