Raam Dev

Glad I could help, Brian! :)

Hi Rudy,

s2Member is a WordPress plugin that uses the WordPress user base and authentication system. Any performance considerations related to large numbers of users would be dependent on what WordPress itself can handle. WordPress has been shown to support sites with thousands, even hundreds of thousands and millions of users (there are certainly upper resource limits that can be reached, but those are related to the physical server running the site and no so much the software).

WordPress does not have any concept of parent-child relationships between members. All members can be assigned a “Role”, of which the s2Member adds several (s2Member Level 1, Level 2, etc., up to an unlimited number of levels with s2Member Pro).

Hi Hugh,

You are correct that Custom Capabilities are going to be your best bet for this scenario. You can sell Custom Capabilities on a one-time basis using the Capability Buy Now feature (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Capability (Buy Now) Buttons), but keep in mind that those can only be one-time payment (i.e., no recurring charges).

If membership accounts are not needed, you can also sell things on a one-time basis using the Specific Post/Page feature (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Specific Post/Page (Buy Now) Buttons). With this feature, someone purchases access to a specific Post/Page for a specific amount of time and receives an email with a link to access that post/page, which doesn’t require any login. The link expires after the given amount of time they purchased.

There are no templates or ways of listing “egoods” in s2Member, because, as you said, the plugin is oriented towards membership, i.e., restricting various content to members with different levels. However, you can certainly use it for the scenario you described, but you will need to custom code any features that do not exist. I’ve seen s2Member adapted for use in many different scenarios that were not purely membership based, so the flexibility and power is there.

Hi Ken,

To accept payments directly on your website using the s2Member PayPal Pro-Forms, you will need the PayPal Pro service with the Recurring Billing option. Please see this Service Introductions video by PayPal for more information.

Hi Brett,

Thank you very much for the detailed summary of what you’ve tried.

Could you please confirm that you’re getting this error when using a PayPal Pro-Form and choosing “PayPal” as your payment type? I tried signing up and got as far as the “confirm payment” screen on PayPal’s website without receiving any errors. Where exactly in the process of signing up do you see this error?

Hi Brian,

As you probably know, WordPress doesn’t have any concept of “companies”; there are users with different roles (e.g., Subscriber, Administrator, s2Member Level 1, s2Member Level 2, etc.).

The s2Member Levels are “levels” not “categories”. You can then restrict WordPress content to specific s2Member Levels and only users with that level or higher will be able to access that content. That last point is important: All s2Member levels are cumulative, meaning that users with higher levels automatically get access to content restricted to lower levels.

The free version of s2Member comes with 4 levels, but with s2Member Pro you can have an unlimited number of membership levels.

If you want to get around the cumulative effect of the levels and restrict users in higher levels from accessing content in lower levels, you’ll need to use the powerful Custom Capabilities feature. With that, you can restrict content to specific Custom Capabilities and only those users who have that Custom Capability will be able to access the content, regardless of their level.

To restrict Custom Post/Page Types, you’ll need to modify your WordPress theme files and add a few conditionals that handle that logic (see Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Advanced PHP Conditionals).

Hi James,

I replied to your other thread on this same topic.

If you’re having trouble playing videos with JW Player, I recommend checking out this shortcode hack that Philly created. It helps simplify embedding videos.

(Qn 1) What are the options available? Is it just Authorize.net, or is Payflow Link (or Payflow Pro) also available,

Please see What payment gateways does s2Member® support?. Newer PayPal Pro accounts come with the Payflow API, which s2Member also supports. While s2Member does support Payflow Pro (the newer version of PayPal Pro), I don’t believe we currently support Payflow Link (which is similar to PayPal Express in that your customer gets transferred to PayPal’s website to make their payment, whereas with PayPal Pro/Payflow Pro, you accept payments directly on your own website).

(Qn 2) Are these available as default and supported by s2 (no custom integrations).

Yes, all of the gateways listed here are supported by s2Member without customizations.

(Qn 3) Furthermore, will transitioning from PayPal Standard w/ Pro Forms to Authorize.net be seamless (i.e., simple, similar logic), or is there a learning curve involved as they work differently.

Yes, the logic is very similar. If you want, you can enabled Authorize.net in Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Other Gateways and then explore the additional menus added. You can do this without affecting your existing PayPal configuration.

(Qn 4) Similarly, if Payflow is available, how is transition (seamless, simple, similar logic)? Please note that I have both Buy Now and recurring payment subscriptions on my website.

PayPal Payflow API is supported, as I mentioned earlier. It’s basically the newer version of PayPal Pro, so if you can’t get PayPal Pro, I doubt you’ll be able to get PayPal Payflow.

If you go from using a PayPal Express account to a PayPal Pro account, the only difference is that you can then use the s2Member Pro-Forms to accept payments directly on your website. You can still use the s2Member PayPal buttons feature.

(Qn 5) If I decide to keep the current setup (PayPal Std. w/ Pro-Forms) for the site launch (this week), and decided to change to Authorize.net, say, at a later date, say 3 months later. In that case, how will recurring subscriptions in the old setup work. Will s2 automatically transfer them, OR, will I have to keep both setups for awhile, and allow only new Authorize.net subscriptions OR will all old setup subscriptions be automatically cancelled. Also, similarly,

No, the subscriptions will not be transferred from one payment gateway to another. There is no automated way to do that.

However, you can use both PayPal and Authorize.net at the same time. So, if you decide to switch to Authorize.net later on, you can simply remove the PayPal buttons from your website and replace them with Authorize.net buttons. All your older members who signed up with PayPal will continue to have access. Their payments will still go through and as long as you leave your PayPal configuration in place, s2Member will continue to handle things like payment failures and cancellations. All your new subscribers will see your Authorize.net buttons and those new subscriptions will be handled by the new payment gateway.

If you want to “move” all your existing subscriptions from PayPal to Authorize.net, you’ll need to have your existing members sign up again through Authorize.net and then cancel their old PayPal subscriptions.

(Qn 6) how will the transition affect specific page/post purchases that still have time left before the end of their expiration terms.

Specific Post/Page purchases will not be affected at all. When someone purchases a Specific Post/Page, they receive an email with a special link that gives them access to the post/page for the duration you specified. Once they have that link, the payment gateway configuration on your site is irrelevant (you could even remove all payment gateway information from s2Member and those people who bought a Specific Post/Page would continue to have access).

Hi Leo,

The Content Dripping feature works by comparing one piece of information (e.g., the number of days that have passed since the user signed up) with another piece of information (e.g., greater than 30 days, greater than 60 days, etc.). So, you could write a conditional that says “if this paid member signed up more than 30 days ago, and they are still a paid member, show them this content”.

There is no data on “number of payments this user has made”, but if you know that the subscription recurs every 30 days, you can simply check if they’re still a paid member and then use how many days has passed since they became a paid member to determine where in the payment history they are.

I recommend reading through Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Content Dripping and Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› PHP/API Constants to learn more about Content Dripping.

You’re most welcome! :)

Hi Anton,

Here’s how you can do that:

// Get an array of all the users' s2Member Custom Fields
$custom_fields = get_user_option("s2member_custom_fields");

// Set the value for a specific field ($custom_fields is an array)
$custom_fields["custom_field_name"] = $NewValue;

// Update the Custom Field data
update_user_option($user->ID, "s2member_custom_fields", $custom_fields);

Glad to help! :)