Questions: content hiding & invoice storage

Hello everybody,

it seems that s2member PRO is the perfect plugin for my needs but there are two things I’d like to know before purchasing it:

1. is it possible to hide certain pages for non logged in visitors or user with a certain membership level? I don’t want to display all premium-sites to all website-visitors and then displaying a massage like “This content is available for membersip lvl. XY only” if clicked on this site. In fact I’d like to hide predefined pages and articles so that these tabs are “added” to the blog-toolbar if a user loggs in.

I.e. the website has a toolbar including the sites “topic a”, “topic b”, “topic c” and “topic d”. “Topic c” is a premium site, so if a non-logged in attendee visits the site he/she should only see “topic a”, “topic b” and “topic d” in the toolbar.

2. does s2member PRO provide the ability to appropiate the invoices to the related user? So if I manually create invoice no. 1234 for user XYZ, is it possible to upload this invoice to user XYZs “My Profile” or “My invoice” section?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Kind regards from Germany

Hi Marco.

1. is it possible to hide certain pages for non logged in visitors or user with a certain membership level? I don’t want to display all premium-sites to all website-visitors and then displaying a massage like “This content is available for membersip lvl. XY only” if clicked on this site. In fact I’d like to hide predefined pages and articles so that these tabs are “added” to the blog-toolbar if a user loggs in.

You can do this with the free version, Pro is not required. Protect the pages at Level 0 to require the user to be logged in, or protect at the higher level you’re selling as the premium level. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Page Access Restrictions[/hilite]

When the user tries to load a page he doesn’t have access to, he’ll be redirected to the Membership Options page, where you can have the message you want. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Membership Options Page[/hilite]

You can customize the message in that page conditionals and the Membership Options Page variables.
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals[/hilite]
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Membership Options Page Variables (MOP Vars)[/hilite]

2. does s2member PRO provide the ability to appropiate the invoices to the related user? So if I manually create invoice no. 1234 for user XYZ, is it possible to upload this invoice to user XYZs “My Profile” or “My invoice” section?

Well, you can give the user a custom capability (ccap) with his username, and then upload the invoice file to the s2member-files directory, protected with that user’s ccap.
Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Custom Capability and Member Level Files[/hilite]

---

I hope that helps!

Hey Cristián,

thanks for your quick reply!

When the user tries to load a page he doesn’t have access to, he’ll be redirected to the Membership Options page, where you can have the message you want. Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Membership Options Page

That’s exactly what I want to avoid. Maybe I didn’t articulated my desire right. To make it clearer here are two screenshots of my website: one like a “normal”, not logged-in visitor sees it. The second image is the menu like a logged-in user sees it. As I marked in the second picture, the pages “Mein Konto” and “Chartbibliothek” are only visible to premium users. A “normal” visitor won’t be redirected to another page if he clicks on one of of those since they [the ‘premium sites’] aren’t displayed to them at all.

At the moment, users have to create a WP-account (i.e. as a ‘subscriber’ or ‘contributor’) and I controll the site-capabilites with the Plugin “CaPa Protect”. I am looking for a way to control the user rights directly through the membership levels and not through an additional WP-account from every user.

Regarding my invoice request, if I get you right the only possibility is to upload the invoices as a normal .pdf, then I have to restrict the access to this file so that only the corresponding user has access to it?

My idea was that every user has a “My account” section where he/she can edit the profile information (like adress, passwort, e-mail). This “my account” section should have a site called “My invoices” where all of his/her invoices are stored. I thought it might be possible to browse through the members list and upload some PDF to a certain account, so that these documents automatically appear in the “My Invoices” section of this specific user. This it not possible?

Regards

A “normal” visitor won’t be redirected to another page if he clicks on one of of those since they [the ‘premium sites’] aren’t displayed to them at all.

You can control that with the Alternative Views retriction for Navigation Menus. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Alternative View Protection[/hilite]

Create a menu in your [hilite path]WP admin -> Appearance -> Menus[/hilite] settings, add the pages you want for it, and select the location for the menu in your theme.

I thought it might be possible to browse through the members list and upload some PDF to a certain account, so that these documents automatically appear in the “My Invoices” section of this specific user. This it not possible?

It’s not impossible, but it isn’t something s2Member does by default, you’d need to code this customization. You can have an Account page with the content variable depending on the user, but the invoices would need to be protected with a ccap for each user (his username would be good to use for this), or any user would be able to get the invoice of another one guessing the file’s name. To automate listing the invoices for the current user, you’d need to have your customization get all the files protected with the ccap that corresponds the his username.

You can control that with the Alternative Views retriction for Navigation Menus. Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Alternative View Protection

Create a menu in your WP admin -> Appearance -> Menus settings, add the pages you want for it, and select the location for the menu in your theme.

Ahhh, perfect! Tried it on a test-blog and it seems that’s what I was looking for :)

It’s not impossible, but it isn’t something s2Member does by default, you’d need to code this customization.

Ok. Not a big issue since I can start by emailing the invoices manually, but good to know that some kind of automation ist possible with extra coding.

Last question before I start setting up the plugin: if I start with the free version of s2member and then – say after a few weeks – decide that I need the PRO add-on, will this upgrade delete all my existing settings so I have to configure everything again, or are the additional options PRO offers just added to the existing settings?

Regards

Last question before I start setting up the plugin: if I start with the free version of s2member and then – say after a few weeks – decide that I need the PRO add-on, will this upgrade delete all my existing settings so I have to configure everything again, or are the additional options PRO offers just added to the existing settings?

It is as you said, you will not need to re-configure everything. :)