Hi there, I've been researching the best way to integrate an autoresponder and a discussion forum with wordpress in a membership site. I've narrowed my search down for a membership site system to WP Wishlist and aMember on the strength of what they say they can do on their website. Still, some things are not 100% clear. The key things I want right now are (all through a single registration): 1. membership registration leads to content delivery via wordpress. 2. automatic optin to aWeber. 3. automatic registration with a discussion forum (prefer phpBB first, then vBulletin). (later will be interested in affiliate sales and am using paypal payments. ---- Let's compare the two for each of the three needs above. A. Wordpress Wishlist 1. yes, it's actually a built in plugin that integrates with the Wordpress dashboard and does a lot of cool things. That is it's MAIN great feature. 2. it will do opt-in to aWeber very well. 3. it will not do discussion board registration unless its to BBpress or simplepress. I prefer to use phpBB because people are used to it's simple look. These two forums look busy and small print = hard to read. Question: Will phpBB or vBulletin accept an email or script from the overall registration that it can parse into its own registration? Anyone write one yet? B. aMember 1. it says it has a wordpress plugin. But they are not specific as to how it plugs in. Does it give the same features as WP Wishlist? 2. currently they have problems opting in to aWeber. It appears to have been like this for a while. Does it work in any capacity or is aWeber out of the question? 3. they WILL go automatic registration with vBulletin well. How does it do with phpBB? The purpose of this site I'm creating is to make a membership site based on community interaction and educational continuity programs. Thank you! Your thoughts are appreciated.
Cant comment on wishlist bit for amember: the plugin copies over member data into wordpress, and also provides a single login between the 2. If you create levels in wordpress using the role manger plugin, you can set products in amember to give access to these levels. Ken Gary developed a plugin that will allow you to use aweber. Yes, you will need to phpbb3 plugin from amember. It will copy the user info and allow single log in. David
the major "defect" I've found so far with WP Wishlist is their inability to protect physical files and content like that... which aMember does amazingly well. So, if you're looking to protect wordpress posts only, WP Wishlist might be for you... but if you're looking to protect downloads, physical files, mp3s, pdfs, whatever, good luck with that - might still have to consider aMember (and apparently WP Wishlist guys are not looking to add that functionality any time soon either). Oh well...
First, thanks David, you rock. That plugin by Ken looks REALLY great. Surprised that aMember didn't take it back from him. And Miso, apparently I've heard that some people are using DLguard with Wishlist on their wordpress to protect the content. The problem I have with Wishlist is that is doesn't do automatic signup with vBulletin or phpBB, nor does it do affiliates. Otherwise, from what I've seen, it looks pretty good.
Yeah, but that's using 2 scripts to perform the function that one can somewhat do. And as much as I like what Wishlist looks like and how it ties into the wordpress (it's pretty goddamn nice, I gotta admit), it doesn't cover it all and until they do integrate all those forums and whatnot I can't seriously consider them... Plus, speaking of DL Guard, I've had a few clients who couldn't wait to drop that script and move on...
How about using aMember for the membership side of the site AND DLguard to protect the site content from being ripped off (videos, threads, posts, ebook links, etc....). Will that work well? I mean, people can pass the specific links for content, say hosted on Amazon S3, around, taken from aMember, can't they?
If using amember already, why not use it to protect the content too? If hosted on S3 then they cant be protected by amember or other script that I know of. David
Just curious, how does WP Wishlist Member work with aMember? I mean role manager is not being updated and WP Wishlist Member seems to be able to handle that role very well.