Hi Ray.
Automated member management – “subscription based” year long membership
Yes, you can send yearly paid memberships.
Enable members to be part of several categories (or lists) enabling placement of members on Master lists, or individual category lists based on profession
s2Member doesn’t add user groups for something like this. You could use the custom profile fields to save the profession in their profiles. Searching by custom profile fields doesn’t have an interface yet, but it’s not impossible to do with a hack.
On site member sign up
Yes, this is included.
o This functionality should tie into the membership management tool
You can change the user’s access from his profile.
o Allow for payment online with automatic membership approval and activation
Yes, this is included.
o Allow for off line payment with membership approval and activation required upon receipt of payment
If it’s offline, then the user’s access will need to be managed manually, editing his profile.
Also have each member to 3-5 categories, or lists, within s2member. ??
Are you referring to users? By categories/lists do you mean levels? There are several levels, yes. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Membership Levels/Labels[/hilite]
All these things can be done with the free version of s2Member, if PayPal Standard is the payment gateway you’ll use. You should install it in a clean WordPress installation to test and explore s2Member’s admin pages. You’ll see what’s available and they have plenty of documentation.
In this site you also have the videos, which explain a lot about the plugin and what you can do with it. I suggest you watch them to learn more and clear your doubts. http://www.s2member.com/videos/
I hope that helps. :)