A beginner's question about Mambo & aMember

Sorry to beat a dead horse here but I'm currently in the process of evaluating whether or not aMember is the right fit for a client's Mambo site. As I understand it the aMember registration can replace the Mambo registration/login module if the Mambo add-on is purchased. This is great but then I have two additional questions assuming the aMember registration is used:

1. The client needs to have what I'll call a 'conditional' registration process. The first page of the registration will contain the basic user reg info plus a couple custom questions for the user. Then based upon how the user answers the custom questions they will be presented with a varying(or conditional) second registration page. On this second page the user will have the ability to choose their registration level - free, member, deluxe - then based upon how they answer this question they would be taken to the appropriate payment page or just registered on the site(if they choose the free membership level).

2. Does aMember work with free memberships as described above? If so, how?

I'm on the cusp of purchasing aMember and the Mambo plug-in so any quick insight would be greatly appreciated.

What about previous member's from Amember?????

to Alex or anyone who can help . . . I know this thread is getting old but . . .

I have been using Amember for over a year and I'm happy with it. Now I installed Mambo and setup my newer site. I struggled with the idea of keeping Amember or going to something like ***********. Well, the ********* would not work on my site for no known reason so I decided to keep Amember and purchased the mod.

The mod is working great but I have a major problem:

There is about 600 members in the Amember database table that do not get moved over to the mambo user table. That's fine but when ever one of the older members logs in and is redirected to the mambo page, they are no longer logged in. If a new member logs in that registered after the Amember mod was installed, they are fine and actually logged into the Mambo page.

Do I need to run a sql script and copy all that crap from the old members into the Mambo users table or what?

I kind of thought it would work better than this. Did I waste my money?

hope someone can help . . . Alex . . .?

Michael

Right on . . .

Alex, as usual you managed to help me out.

I did not however, get the idea that you built in this feature to the module for mambo by reading the article you quoted me:

https://www.amember.com/support/faq...cle&articleid=4

You should ad this information to that article as it is VERY important because I had an existing Amember database.

Thanks again for your great work,
Michael McKinney

Alex . . .

OK, so everything is going good except one thing. In Mambo, I'm using a mod to show the newest members. It picks up on the registered date. I ran the database rebuild from Amember as you said but it fills the registered date in Mambo with all zeros. This effectively stops that mod from working. Is there someway to get the Amember/Mambo integration to pass the date/time over from the 'added' field?

The table that Mambo uses is #_users and the field is 'registerDate'. The format is the same so it's just passing over the data.

Hope you can help.

Michael

...

I have amember all set up with mambo including the login module. However, when I try to login using the amember module it first tries to redirect me to the "protected area" which is nothing because mambo is installed on the root directory. Then it fails to login to amember. I have to relogin through the amember/member.php page.

I find that it logs me into mambo just fine but it does not log me into amember and am forced to relogin when I'm in the member.php page. Any help?

Mambo & Amember . . . how it's working for me.

I am using the mambo login module. I just modified the hyperlinks in them that point to stuff like 'lost password', 'create account' and others. What I did was setup all of the signup, lost password and such from amember using the Mambo wrapper. Then I took that URL and pasted it into the mambo login module over the old hyperlinks. It seems to be working great, over 600 members are using everyday for a couple weeks now and no problems yet . . . (yet)

As far as Amember going to the 'protected' area, I reconfigured Amember in the admin/products section to use the root dir as the protected area and let Mambo do the member permissions. Just be sure to CHMOD dirs and files appropriately and use .htaccess where needed.

So far all of this works OK. You DO NEED the amember module for mambo as it handles all the database interaction between amember and mambo. Seemed weird at first but all seems well.

Hope this helps, you can look at my mambo/amember wrappers in the login box at:

http://www.classicglasspars.com

Michael

Need clarification on integration for paid vs free members

Thank you for your input here. Unfortunately, I'm still a little confused. I'm currently running Joomla with aMember and the aMember/Joomla plugin. I have unpublished the Joomla login and published the aMember login as instructed. However, I'm confused about assigning/setting up the modules.

In aMember admin under Manage products, setting integration for Mambo/Joomla access module, should I select "Registered" for every product? Or should I choose "Public Frontend" for free content and "Regsitered" for paid content? I'm confused here...I'm also confused as to how Mambo/Joomla will know how to assign everyone who signs up through aMember as paid member or free trial member.

I understand that when I'm adding content to Joomla I assign public for all free content and registered for paid content, but still confused on the proper assignment (and definitions) in aMember. I'm also still a little unclear about how aMember and Joomla actually "talk" to each other. Maybe if I understood better how the information is shared between these two scripts it would make more sense...

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

QC

The "older" Mambo plugin only had only a few choices for selecting the level of access for your member: "Public, Registered & Special". Public is just Guest privileges, Registered users can access content marked as "Registered", and Special is the general group above registered that can do things like submit content, edit content, etc. and also access content marked as "Special". The functionality for "special" in the older Mambo plugin was not sufficient to handle the special class because you couldn't choose what actual level of privilege you wanted. In most cases you just assign a paid amember user as "registered".

In the "new" Amember Joomla plugin there is expanded choices but if you don't know what these other Joomla access levels do, just choose "Registered" and this will allow them to see the Joomla "registered only" user content, but not have any priviledges like editing, submitting, etc.

The easisest way to do it is to have all your free content as "Public" (in Joomla...i.e. available to all "Guests" or NON-registered people). Then have the protected content set to "Registered" (in Joomla) and have Amember create your new Joomla Member and assign him/her to Registered status once they make payment.

Finer grained access level control (ACL) is currently not readily available in Joomla and is one of the few things lacking still... (i.e. you can't have one set of registered members see some things and other registered members see other things.) unless you know how to muck with the code or or other "hacks".

For Authentication: Amember authenticates the user via the amember database, then sets the proper cookies so that Joomla knows it is logged in.

For Adding, Updating, & Deleting Members, Amembers directly adjusts the Joomla database and syncronizes the 2 database tables.

Hope that all helped!

-John

Hi JohnM,

Thanks for a great post that explained a lot of things to me. I was just wondering if you have any information about the ability to setup mulitiple access groups (ACL) as you mention. Do you know when this will be available? Can you point me in a direction where I can find more info about this?

Thanks!

Nick

nevermind

Hi again,

Please disregard my last post

I went to joomla forum and did a search on 'ACL' which gave me loads of information to get up to speed on - thanks anyway!

Nick

No problem Nick, sorry for the delayed response, I was away from the computer (!!!) for a a few needed days. I'm glad you found your answers on the joomla forums. Let me add in:

1.) the "Community Builder" (CB) Joomla component ( www.mambojoe.com I think) has extended ACL abilities, but the amember / joomla plugin will not work with it yet. At some point I may experiment with CB and extend the plugin for Alex and those of you who use it, but I'm kinda thinking I want to wait and see if and how Joomla & CB "meld" together or if Joomla takes on its own version of ACL implementation.

2.) It IS possible to "roll your own" limited ACL through the use of customizing your joomla template with PHP and using copies of "menus" and "modules" - its advanced, but thought I would mention it. You would also be able to get more info on this on the joomla forum. If your research leads you into any specific questions, feel free to PM me.

Cheers,

-John

Hello, please anyone mail me the integration plugin, to pisek()pisem.net

thanks in advance.

Joomla

I am reading these posts because I am considering buying aMember to password protect my Joomla site. I have three questions:

(1) If I use aMember, and I register my users through aMember, can I simply register them myself use the admin panel, and not allow users to "self-register"?

(2) Once I have users added through aMember and synchronized to be users in my Joomla database, can those users post content? I was a little unclear on this issue? Can I later go back and give them the ability to post content?

(3) Apparently Joomla has an integrated forum that does not require a bridge. If I set one up, I assume I can use Joomla's ACL to make the forum only available to specific groups (i.e. registered users), such that the content in the forum is also protected and only accessible to aMember users?

Thanks in advance.

I've got amember and joomla setup with the joomla plugin at http://www.wmfsb.com you can take a look at it if you'd like.

1. Yes you can register new users manually thru amember admin or have the clients buy a subscription ( or free subscription) with the amember order form that also registers them in joomla. This is done with the joomla plugin from amember.

2. Yes the new members registered via amember can be assigned any of the available joomla permissions. This is done in amember when you setup a new product. the amember joomla plugin adds a product attribute that gives them a permission level in Joomla.

3. Yes the integrated forums work with amember registered users. I'm using joomlaboard which is the integrated forum in joomla. If a user is registered with the right permissions thru the amember plugin, this allows them to participate in the forum.

Hope this helps.

jmaduk : where can I get the plugin? are you sure the address you give is right?

Order the plugin from amember.com

http://www.amember.com/amember/signup.php

Look for the joomla plugin, it's near the bottom.

It installs on you joomla site and replaces the default joomla login module.