Bruce

Thanks for the info. We’re waiting on word back from Jason (Lead Developer). We’ll let you know what we get back from him. :-)

Thank you for your inquiry.

It sounds like the use of Custom Capabilities is what is necessary here. However Custom Capabilities are not able to protect entire Categories. You’ll have to protect each one of these with the correct Custom Capability when they are created, or use s2Member’s PHP Conditionals to achieve this.

Past that, you should be able to give access to “Compete” members to appropriate categories this way.

Thank you for your inquiry.

1) Will members on the same tier be able to purchase access to specific pages they pay for?

Yes. Any member or nonmember can use Specific Post/Page Access Buttons/Pro Forms to buy access to a Post/Page, or you can sell this content with Custom Capabilities.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Specific Post/Page (Buy Now) Forms
See Also: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Capability (Buy Now) Forms

2) Does s2member have any options that can show customers which pages they have access to?

s2Member doesn’t have any specific functionality for this purpose, no. But s2Member does offer several API functions that would make setting this up much easier.

See: http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-summary/

3) Does s2member handle guest AND member page purchases?

No, s2Member currently does not have the capability to perform guest purchases. Sorry about that.

4) Is the built in WP member directory good enough to retain s2member customer info?

This is what all of s2Member’s installations use, and it works just fine for our users. It’s meant for holding data like this, so it should work fine. :-)

5) Are there any other membership databases that work out of the box with s2member besides Buddypress?

You can find all of our integrations here:

s2Member® » Pro » Features

6) Is there a way to show certain members ads and pages we want them to see?

You can use other plugins to achieve this, as s2Member integrates with the default WordPress Roles and Capabilities functionality, so it integrates smoothly with most other plugins in this regard. s2Member doesn’t have this capability out-of-box, though. You’ll have to set this up on your own.

7) Can we use a normal front end header login plugin or does the pro version have one? (built in the header only)

You can use a normal login form with s2Member. s2Member Pro does come with a login widget, but it’s meant to go into a sidebar.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Will s2member pro enable us to manage this user database as we intend?

• add custom fields when a new user subscribes, ie: a member wants to be a member of “development” group, so he chooses “development group” when he subscribes.

This could be done through s2Member’s Custom Capabilities. These are specific packages that you can sell or manually give to Users when they sign up. You can find lots of information regarding Custom Capabilities here:

Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)
Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Custom Capabilities

• I also need him to be able to choose subcategories, ie: development group => translations => french + development group => translations => german + think tank group => ideas => whatever…

You can give Users multiple Custom Capabilities to separate these Users into subgroups. You’ll have to take a look at the way Custom Capabilities work to understand how you can use them this way.

• I need to be able to contact by email all the members of a said group, send emails to the “devlopment group =>translations =>german” members.

This is not possible through s2Member. You’ll have to have a developer set this up if it’s necessary for you.

• I don’t need restriction of content for these users, i dont need access to “premium” content to specific groups either, just a “database” of members and the ability to contact each group separately. But as i said, i need the member to pay a subscription fee to be able to access membership.

s2Member uses the default WordPress Roles and Capabilities system, so the default WordPress Users database would be used here. You can also export your Users with s2Member Pro to achieve this if you need to.

We could use the export function to export our users database in CSV, and use external software to email specific groups of this database, but i have to be sure we can organise these members like explained above : users can join a variety of groups, and subgroups. And that the export contains these custom data fields.

Yes I believe you could achieve this, but it would take a custom parser for the Export data. You can find information on the format of these exports here:

Knowledge Base » Import (or Mass Update) Users

A seminar can be £500+. Is there a way of accepting cheques and bank transfers?

s2Member doesn’t have any integration for accepting checks or bank transfers directly, but you can give access to Users manually by either sending them one of these links (if they’re a User that wants to sign up) via email

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Registration Access Links

Or you can manually upgrade the User, and/or manually update their End of Term date if it’s not a One-Time transaction.

If I change it manually, where do I do that?

It takes custom code. This thread goes over this:

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/46848/how-to-modify-the-register-link-in-the-login-page

Would I be able to pull user info about the account that has been tripped using this hook? Like Name and Email?

s2Member gives you all of the variables it has at this point. These IP Restrictions also work for Specific Post/Page Access Restrictions, so there is not always a Username within these variables, but if there is you can grab it from the $restriction variable.

Here is an example of how you would use these variables:

Knowledge Base » Hacking s2Member® Via Hooks/Filters

I was hoping one of the developers could answer. Should I hang out for three months or just change now? I really would like to stay with s2member.

When you say that there were multiple releases after this was mentioned, this were Maintenance Releases. The next major version of s2Member will be a full rewrite and is being worked on as we speak. It is with this version of s2Member that we hope to move in some of the new features that are being talked about in the forums. We have been hoping to have this out for quite a long time now, but as there were many many changes to the PayPal, Google Checkout, and a couple other APIs, it’s been delayed for quite a while now.

We can’t give an estimate on when this version of s2Member will be available, so I would recommend moving on with your project in the mean time.

I checked our server access log and saw that attempts at wp-cron.php were being redirected. It turns out the problem was being caused by our errant age-gating plugin. Disable that and the payment process completes

Thanks for the info! Glad to hear you fixed your issue. :-)

Let us know if you have any further issues.

how do i access custom field of specific user ID ?

You’d use s2Member’s get_user_field() function.

See: http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-functions/#src_doc_get_user_field()

Will this prevent them from posting in the forums the first time? If it doesn’t, then I’m okay with leaving this as is. But if it does, it’s critical that I get this changed…

I’m unsure. I would say that this is a definite possibility. I would recommend testing this.

I’m contacting Jason (Lead Developer) about his thoughts on this issue.

I want to bypass the auto return page…it is ugly, unnecessary and asks the user to log in before going back to the site. I wonder why it is needed, at least visually.

Actually the Auto-Return page is very necessary. When PayPal redirects a User back to your site after a transaction, they are greeted with a Thank-You page, but their account is not yet ready to be created/upgraded. s2Member needs to wait (usually just a few moments) for PayPal to send transaction data back to your server to either send the appropriate email, or upgrade the User’s account.

If you’d like to create your own Thank-you page, this is possible. You must have s2Member Pro installed, and you can use the success attribute here:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Custom Return URLs Upon Success

The success shortcode does not work (my understanding is that it will only work with non-members). I don’t particularity want to customise it just bypass to a thank you page.

s2Member’s success attribute should work in any transaction. This sounds like the issue here. Do you have logging enabled? If you do, could you send us a Dashboard login so we can take a look at them?

See: s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Let us know when you send that information.

Check out the plugin “Limit Login Attempts” ( http://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts/ ).

This drastically reduced the amount of brute force password attacks on the Admin user. Just make sure that you set high enough hours for the locking period. I usually set these values:

s2Member actually has this exact same functionality built in here:

Knowledge Base » s2Member® Brute Force IP/Login Restrictions

So my question is, how can I work around the issue of brute force attacks against wp-login and still provide access to my customers?

s2Member can only provide so much protection using IP Addresses here:

Knowledge Base » s2Member® Brute Force IP/Login Restrictions

If you’re having a problem with Brute Force attacks, this is something that has to be dealt with on the server-side, I’m afraid. s2Member’s Bruce Force Login Restrictions will help you, but IP Addresses are possible to be spoofed (faked), which is likely what happened in your case. You’ll have to contact your hosting company about that.