Hi All, I have posted the following query to the help desk but I would also be interested in anyone elses thoughts on how they set up aMember for similar needs to my own. Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated. ------------------- I have aMember installed and have set up the main site templates aswell as the aMember header and footer templates pretty much as I want. This is good but now I am at a critical stage. I need to be able to protect certain areas of my site to be accessed only by paying subscribers. There seems to be several ways I could do this so I advice as to which is the best and easiest to implement with aMember. I have a video tutorial website and wish to provide subscription based access to the tutorials. I want to have some free content to so that uers can sample the videos to see if they wish to subscribe to my site. My preferred way of doing this is to have one page for video tutorials which contains a list of ALL available video tutorial titles (i.e. Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Visual basic etc.). When any one of these links is clicked on then the user is taken to a page so they can access the set of videos in that tutorial (i.e. Excel[1], Excel[2], Excel[3] etc.). Now, when the user is directed this page I would like to see all videos available to view but allow the user to only gain access to the first two or three tutorials (i.e. only the first couple of links are active, the rest of the links are removed so the text is just there). Also, if the user was subscribed and logged in and access the same URL then a different page would be displayed, this time showing a page of video tutorials with ALL links active so the subscribed user can view all videos and not just the first couple. This would mean for each video tutorial title (i.e. Excel for example) I would need to display either the basic page (i.e. just the first couple of video tutorial links active), or the full tutorials page (i.e. ALL video tutorial links active). It would need some script so that depending on the user subscription status one or the other pages are displyed. This neds to be robust enough to work well. Another alternative which I have considered is to have one page showing free videos, and another showing full videos which can only be accessed by paying subscribers. I dont really want this though, I prefer the above way, as it would look to the user as though he is seeing the same page but depending on his subscription status some, or all, of the video tutorial links would be active. This would be great, and pretty seamless to the user. I hope the above made sense! I can elaborate if needed. Best wishes, David
I offer video as either a free excerpt or the full video if you're a member. You can see how I handle it per video here http://www.crimescene.com/fine/interviews.html Tom PS, its the same video clip shown to free and paid. The excerpting is handled via smil tags.
free preview not working? FYI: I clicked on your 'free preview' to see how it works on your site and instead I found this: http://www.crimescene.com/store/index.php Where's the free preview? Interesting site by the way.
What link did you click that took you to the online store. The video links on the page mentioned should have no store links. A free video previoew is a short video excerpt Tom
free preview Good morning Tom, I clicked from the box saying: Special Offer! Free 30-day Trial Full 30-day access included with slected purchase from our detective store. We carry fingerprint kits, luminol, forensic detective clothing and more. at: http://www.crimescene.com/admin/join.html
premium membership with videos I have amember integrated with mambo to protect my video library. The sales page is here http://www.internetmarketingforsmallbusiness.com and the content is here at http://www.wmfsb.com I use the mambo plugin with amember.
123, the free preview requires no action on the viewers part. On the page referenced above, just click a video link such as http://www.crimescene.com/fine/movies/andy/vid.php On that link two versions of the video are presented. One that excerpts the 1st part for free and one that presents the full version. people that wander into the site can see the excerpted video without needing any membership at all. Our paid members see the whole thing. And, when someone sees the free excerpt, the are presented with a membership video at the end of it--and are redirected to the join page. The excerpting and ad are handled via smil. Tom