Jason (Lead Developer)

Hi Sherri. Thanks for your inquiry.

unless I put links to the 3 pages in the body of the “welcome once you have logged in” page. They should see links in the left side bar that are accessible. I should also say that they also get access to one more page which is linked on the sidebar via an image.

Sorry, can you please elaborate just a bit further on how these links in the Sidebar are setup? Did you integrate some type of WordPress menu there? Or is it using conditionals in either PHP or with Shortcodes? Why should these links be shown exactly? And what do you think the source of the issue is?

Thank you. I believe this issue was reported once before, and we discovered that it’s actually NOT related to the Markdown library or with s2Member, but rather it’s a known bug in the PCRE library that is sometimes compiled in with your installation of PHP.

The bug was also reported here, and I’d suggest reviewing this article.
http://drupal.org/node/1255780

If you can, please run <?php phpinfo(); ?> on your site, and determine the current version of PCRE that you’re running. Upon running <?php phpinfo(); ?>, you should find the version of PCRE that your installation of PHP is running with. See: http://php.net/manual/en/function.phpinfo.php

In short, you can try reverting to an older version of PHP, or compiling PHP against a patched version of the PCRE library, or perhaps upgrade to PHP v5.3.10 to see if that helps. I’ve tested this against PHP v5.3.8 and was unable to reproduce the issue against the bundled copy of PCRE v8.12. However, it’s possible that your installation of PHP was compiled against a different version of PCRE that already existed on the server (i.e. instead of the bundled copy that comes with PHP v5.3.8).

See also: http://www.php.net/manual/en/pcre.installation.php
See also: http://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1136

Thanks for the follow-up.

Yea, this is where logging can be of assistance. If you enabled logging as I mentioned earlier, then you can submit your log file for review, and we’ll be happy to have a look for you. Please use our Private Contact Form to submit any log entries: s2Member® » Private Contact Form

1. I could theoretically create a registration system where users would ONLY be able to register for the free account. Once registered, I would be able to change their account types via the admin panel, but they would NOT be able to change their account types or try to buy a different account type themselves. Correct?

Yes, that’s certainly possible. You can always change their Role via the Dashboard, bumping them to a higher Membership Level. If you don’t want anything done automatically, just don’t make any Payment Buttons or Payment Forms available on the site. For instance, Payment Buttons and/or s2Member Pro Forms allow Customers to upgrade/downgrade by supplying billing details. If you want to avoid that, you can do everything manually through the Dashboard instead. You could still use a Pro Form for Free Registration though.

2. Can s2 send out an automated email with all a user’s information upon registration? We have a membership committee, and it’s easier to forward an email than to copy-paste member information into an email before we send it out to the other committee members for review.

Yes, this is already built into s2Member. These emails can be further customized in your Dashboard here: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Email Configuration

3. Can one create “hidden” user fields that to track specific member data without members being able to change it?

Yes, in WordPress, this is called a User Option, or a User Meta field. You can set values via PHP using the existing functionality provided by WordPress. Please see: update_user_meta().

Note. In your Dashboard, s2Member also has an Administrative Notes field, which allows administrators of the site to make notations about a User/Member, without that information being made public in any way. This might be an easier alternative for you, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish exactly.

Great to hear this was resolved. Thanks for following up!
~ Much appreciated :-)

Closing this topic, thank you VERY much for the follow-up :-)

Thanks for the feedback :-) Much appreciated. I’ll see what we can do.

Hi Bendix. Yes, this article talks about the ideal server configuration for s2Member.
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/ideal-server-configuration-for-s2member/

I took a quick look at your PHP configuration, that looks good. If you continue to have trouble, please post a copy of your .htaccess file also, and/or any other Apache configuration options you’re running.

Right. Or, you could also generate a PayPal Button with s2Member, and make that available along with your Pro Form. That’s just another option for now, until we’ve integrated Pro Forms for Authorize.Net, directly with Express Checkout. If you’re running Pro Forms with a PayPal Pro account, this is already possible, but with Authorize.Net as your primary integration, you will need to add PayPal Buttons separately, for now please.

Thanks for the follow-ups.

Let me start here please…

@luisrosario

Hey there Jason, am I correct in recognizing if we look at page source, one can copy the download link distribution and download the file? So logged in user if they have access to a specific video, all they have to do is look at page source to download the file?? Can you confirm if this is the case? Thank you.

Right. Exposing the HTML5 video tag option, or direct download option; as fallbacks, makes the MP4 URL available. So you’d want to remove those additional fallbacks if you’re concerned about this (i.e. if you only want to allow true RTMP streaming). RTMP streaming is the most secure option, and should work fine for most visitors.

This is a usability vs. security issue. If you want to maximize usability, allow the fallback options. If you’re more concerned about security, you’ll need to require Users/Members to have Flash®, so they can view the RTMP stream; but NOT allow them to access the MP4 file directly (i.e. remove the direct MP4 fallbacks).

In addition to NOT making the MP4 URLs available, you might also want to disable any type of direct downloading of these files through other means (i.e. to prevent a logged in Member from typing a URL directly to the file download). By default, all files are available to Users/Members who pass your Basic Download Restrictions. Your S3 Bucket is a drop-in replacement for the normal /s2member-files/ directory, so the ability to download files through a direct link remains possible.

For example, even if you don’t make the MP4 URL available in your JW Player code, I could still type a URL like this one. If I’m logged into your site, and I pass your Basic Download Restrictions, I can download the MP4.

http://example.com/?s2member_file_download=video.mp4

Here is one way to prevent this from occurring.
Don’t set any Basic Download Restrictions for s2Member, causing your installation of s2Member to NOT allow any direct downloads at all. Instead, you’ll need to take further control over the way File Downloads are handled, through Advanced Download Restrictions, with File Download Keys (i.e. only you, as the site owner, will decide when/where File Downloads are going to be allowed). If you go this route, you’d need to issue a File Download Key when generating your RTMP streamer with s2Member.

For example… file_download_key => true
Reference docs on: s2member_file_download_url()

<div id="jw-container">JW Player® appears here.</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/jwplayer/jwplayer.js"></script>

<?php if(is_user_logged_in() && current_user_can("access_s2member_level1"))
	{
		/* A direct URL to the RTMP source; issuing a File Download Key to the current visitor in real-time. */
		$cfg = array ("file_download" => "video.mp4", "file_download_key" => true, "url_to_storage_source" => true);
		
		/* API Function `s2member_file_download_url()`.
			See docs here: http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-functions/#src_doc_s2member_file_download_url() */
		$mp4 = s2member_file_download_url ($cfg, "get-streamer-array");
		?>

		<script type="text/javascript">
			jwplayer("jw-container").setup({modes: /* JW Player®. */
			[
				/* Only allow real-time streaming with Flash® player. */
				{type: "flash", provider: "rtmp", src: "/jwplayer/player.swf",
				config: {streamer: "<?php echo $mp4&#91;"streamer"&#93;; ?>", file: "<?php echo $mp4&#91;"file"&#93;; ?>"}}
			],
			/* Set video dimensions. */ width: 480, height: 270
			});
		</script>

<?php } else /* Access is denied by site owner. */ { ?>
	Sorry, you do NOT have access to this file.
<?php } ?>

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Jason (Lead Developer). Reason: Made code sample clearer
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Jason (Lead Developer). Reason: Made code sample clearer
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Jason (Lead Developer). Reason: Updated to "file_download_key" => true

Hi there. Thanks for the follow-ups.

Yes, I suppose that I am. But I’m skating the question because it’s my job to report what is possible in the current release clearly. While we are working to further improve s2Member overall (and yes, this is something we’re working on), it’s NOT possible in the current release. You would need to use BuddyPress, or bbPress perhaps.

A member directory is coming in a future release of s2Member though, so yes. In the mean time, if BuddyPress or bbPress is not an option for you, the core WordPress function get_users() could be used to build your own, blending it with your theme for WordPress. See: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_users

Hi Rob & Cristian :-)
Thanks for the heads up on this thread.
Rob, are you running s2Member Pro Forms with a PayPal Pro account, or PayPal Standard Buttons?