Raam Dev

No problem. Glad I could help! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Hi Pierre,

Please see my replies below:

They want 3 types of content on their website.
1. Free unregistered content. Any casual visitor can view without registering.
2. Free registered content. If you register for a free account you get additional content when you are logged in.
3. Paid bonus content. You can pay for a yearly membership to unlock exclusive content.

Yes, s2Member fully supports all three of these.

In addition to managing the above, client wants to:
4. Make sure paid users can pay with credit card, without requiring them to sign up for PayPal. Is that possible?

Yes, this is possible with s2Member Pro and PayPal Website Payments Pro (see PayPal Service Introductions). With s2Member Pro and PayPal Pro, you can accept credit cards directly on your site without requiring a redirect to PayPal’s website.

5. Offer Sponsorships. So basically anybody can buy a sponsorship and have their company listed on my client’s website. The catch is that anyone whose company has paid for a Sponsorship should get a discounted price whenever any one of their users signs up for paid bonus content. (e.g. Joe off the street would have to pay $500 for paid membership. Acme Co is a sponsor, so Jill, who works at Acme, can buy the paid membership for a discounted price of $250.) Can that kind of thing be automated via S2 Member? I’m sort of guessing not because how would S2 Member verify that Jill works at Acme? Even if it can’t be fully automated, maybe you can describe a decent way to manage the process and that will be good enough for my client.

Sponsorships themselves are not directly supported, but in the scenario you describe it sounds like you could use the s2Member Pro-Coupon codes feature (available with s2Member Pro). You could create a coupon for each company and then give that coupon to the sponsoring company to give to their employees. Only employees would have the coupons. When they plug that coupon into the Pro-Form during checkout, it would apply the discount you configured for the coupon.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Hi Cheryl,

This article should be helpful.

Hi Aaron,

s2Member does not currently have a Renewal Notification feature, however you may be interested in one of these hacks. Otherwise, if all your memberships end on the same date, you could use something like MailChimp or AWeber to schedule an email that gets sent to your users.

Regarding the shortcode for viewing member details: The only shortcode s2Member provides is one for showing a Profile Editing form (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Member Profile Modifications). There lots of PHP constants that s2Member provides (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› PHP/API Constants) that you could also use in conjunction with the Exec-PHP Plugin to display some extra details, but if there’s anything else you want to show, you’ll need to write the PHP code to show it.

No, that’s not the case. As long as you don’t click any buttons that say something like “Regenerate API Key” or “Generate API Key”, you should be able to simply view the current settings.

Hi,

Perhaps you’re thinking of Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / List Servers -› Registration Double Opt-In Box?

I can confirm that s2Member Pro does not have an option in the dashboard for disabling double opt-in for MailChimp. You will still need to use the hack described here.

Josh,

You can find the Free Registration forms at Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Free Registration Forms.

What you can do is create three pages for each of your three services, then protect them to Level 0 (i.e., Free Subscribers). Then, you can link to those pages from your home page and if a non-logged in visitor clicks one of those links, s2Member will redirect them to your Membership Options Page (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Membership Options Page), where you can describe that they need to create an account first. You can also show them the Free Registration Pro-Form on this Membership Options Page.

Then, if you want your home page to be the Login Welcome Page, that’s fine, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind. You’ll need to set the Login Welcome Page to the URL of the home page in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Login Welcome Page using the Special Redirection URL at the bottom of that section.

Then you’ll probably want to use some conditional code on your home page to check if the person viewing the home page is logged in (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Simple/Shortcode Conditionals). If they are logged in, you can show them the purchase buttons.

Or you could skip the use of conditionals altogether if you wanted and just leave those original links there, because once the person logs in, those links on the home page will now take them to the actual purchase pages instead of the Membership Options Page (since they have access to Level 0 now that they’re logged in). However, from a usability standpoint, you might want to make it obvious that to your newly logged in user that those links actually go somewhere other than the Membership Options Page, so that’s why I mentioned using conditionals.

Hi Ben,

If you want to make a menu link that dynamically changes based on the user’s login, you’ll need to edit your theme’s header.php file (or wherever the menu is generated) and then add in the necessary PHP code to make that menu dynamic. Instead of the replacement codes, you can use the s2Member PHP Constants in your PHP code: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› PHP/API Constants.

Hi Lynn,

Please see my replies below:

– Aweber Integration (we have multiple lists set up)

Yes, we support integration with both AWeber and MailChimp.

– Invite codes and coupons (does not work in WPMU plugin, though it’s in the control panel!)

s2Member Pro comes with the Pro-Coupons feature, which allows you to create any number of coupon codes that apply various types of discounts to the total at checkout. You can then give out those coupon codes for people to use. You can also set coupons to expire after a specific date.

There are no “invite” codes at this time.

– Easier way for members to view and update their profiles (no kidding, it seems like her customers have to jump through hoops to get to their profiles)

s2Member provides a shortcode that you can place on a “Edit Profile” page (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Member Profile Modifications) to allow your users to edit and update their profile.

– Easier login (what is on the site now was patched together by me by editing code and adding plugins). We definitely want the login box to be up top, pretty much where it is now.

s2Member uses the WordPress login and authentication system. If you want to create your own login form, any plugin that works with the WordPress login should also work with s2Member. Otherwise, you can certainly code your own login form. s2Member Pro comes with the Pro Login widget, so if you have a widgetized area of your theme, you can use that in there (this works well in sidebars).

– Dripped content

Yes, s2Member supports Content Dripping (please see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Content Dripping).

– Ability to disable login until AFTER the registrant has paid for the registration (no kidding – WPMU plugin actually gives the person signing up full subscription access BEFORE the payment is completed!)

By default, s2Member registers users as Free Subscribers, regardless of what level they paid for. When s2Member receives payment confirmation from PayPal via the backend IPN communication, s2Member silently and automatically upgrades their account to the level of access they paid for. This ensures that only those who have really paid you get access to the protected content.

– We’d like to be able to list multiple subscription options to people who register, but also have the ability to offer a special rate to only to a select group of folks – without that option showing up on the page where everyone else can see it.

Yes, you can create any number of PayPal Buttons and/or Pro-Forms and place those wherever you want. If you want to create a special private page where you list a few special signup options, you can do that as well.

We’re using Paypal Express gateway for subscriptions. We would like to continue using this method.

Yes, PayPal Express is supported. (See Pre Sale FAQs » What payment gateways does s2Member® support? for a complete list.) Also, keep in mind that the Pro-Forms that come with s2Member Pro do not require PayPal Pro; you can use them with PayPal Express. The Pro-Forms allow you to create any number of registration forms for your various levels of access.

If we decided to use s2Member, how difficult would converting from WPMU plugin be? Would we lose our current membership data, or could we keep everything we currently have with the exception of having to set up access and subscription levels?

That’s hard to say. I’m not familiar with how WPMU works. However, if it stores all the users in the WordPress user base, then the migration should be relatively straightforward. s2Member uses the WordPress user base and authentication system, so if your other membership plugin maintains it’s own separate database for users, you’ll need to migrate those over. Please see How to Migrate to s2Member Pro from Other Software for more information.

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I recommend watching our tutorial videos and downloading and installing the free s2Member Framework to get a better idea of how s2Member works. If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Hi Verane,

s2Member can accomplish most of this. That last part about a progress bar is something you’d need to code in yourself (or find a WordPress plugin that adds that functionality).

With s2Member you can sell access to individual ‘things’ through the use of Custom Capabilities. Your scenario will use Custom Capabilities heavily, so I recommend learning about those. Also, you may want to watch the Client Portals video, since you might want to have a separate page for each person.

Lets us know if you have any other questions.

Hi Desmond,

Please see this thread.

Hi Mike,

Yes, that’s correct. If you simply want the coupon code to be unusable after a certain date, you can set the expiration date. Any coupons that have an expiration date in the past will be unusable.

Hi Florence,

Yes, you can add members manually (see Can I create new Membership accounts manually with s2Member?).

If you want to “approve” members manually, you can have them register for a free account (with s2Member Pro, you can use the Free Registration Pro-Forms), and then you can review those accounts and manually change their account to a different level, e.g., s2Member Level 1, to indicate they have been “approved”.

Regarding Custom Registration/Profile Fields: Yes, you can create those in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Registration/Profile Fields.

Let us know if you have any other questions.