Might Purchase - Question About Amember And Wordpress

Ok, I was a long time user of Amember 3 but switched to Wishlist Member a few years ago. While I still like it, I am pretty impressed with what I've heard about Amember version 4. Before I make the switch back to Amember, I am hoping someone can answer a few questions for me....

I use Wordpress 100% for my site. I think I read that I can run Amember and install the new Wordpress plugin and that all of the customer facing stuff will all be in Wordpress and just the admin stuff that I use won't be...is that accurate and correct? - Example...will Amember register and sign up forms use my Wordpress theme design so no custom coding would be needed?

Is there a way for me to test this on my actual Wordpress site before purchasing? I tried the demo but that is an online demo not connected to one of my sites.

Lastly, is there a built in shopping cart within Amember that would allow 1 click upsells (using Paypal)?

The aMember register/signup forms will be on aMember pages that use the WordPress (WP) header/footer and overall theme. With a little bit of tweaking the switch from a WP page to an aMember page can be seemless. Once a person is registered, they could login with the supplied aMember widget and not have to login on the aMember page.

Note that there have been some WP themes that did not work properly with the aMember integration. This is usually due to WP themes that are not standards based. The list below identifies the themes that are known to work. If users know of others themes that work with aMember respond to this post and I will add them to this list which is posted here in the aMember Installation Wiki.

• Catalyst Theme Framework (Tested - OK)
• Genesis Theme Framework (StudioPress) (Tested - OK)
• Headway Themes (Untested)
• iThemes (Untested)
• ThemeHybrid (Untested)
• Thesis Theme Framework (DIYthemes) (Untested)
• WooThemes (Untested)
• WordPress Twenty Ten (Tested - OK)
• WordPress Twenty Eleven (Tested - OK)

No, but there is a 30-days money back policy

There is a shopping cart module built into aMember. I have not used it and therefore do not know if it will do what you want. With the following abilities, you can ususally make about any sales flow work.

• The ability to built an unlimited amount of sales pages
• The ability to control the conditions that products are made avaialble
• The ability to control the WP menu system dynamically based on memberships.

Thanks for the awesome reply Grant, I appreciate it.

Good detail reply.

Hello Grant, or anyone who might know the answer to this. I checked the appropriate box in aMember's integration settings for using WordPress theme header/footer with aMember pages. I've noticed that my theme is dynamic width with a minimum width below which that a horizontal browser scrollbar is introduced and a maximum width beyond which the page background left/right margin gets bigger.

However, the aMember content/pages in the middle between my header and footer seems constrained only by the browser width, proportionately resizing to that regardless of what's happening with the theme.

Is there any way to constrain the aMember pages/content to the theme min/max & dynamic between?

Make sense?

Thanks,
Gary

I think you're gonna need to edit the amember amember.css to make it better conform to your theme- create a new site.css file so that your edits dont get overwritten with updates.

David

Thanks David! I haven't tried this yet. I'm fairly new at PHP and CSS . . . looking to understand a little more before I make changes to files.

(Though earlier today I understood and followed your directions relative to the footer customization thread - removing the aMember Pro version number with link to site & CGI-Central.net copyright. Why would this file <amember.php> not be overwritten in a future software update? Or would / could it and you just didn't point that out there ? Or . . . do you point out this here related to CSS because you can include css from external files under your own name <site.css> and thus easily avoid being overwritten?)

I hope that wasn't a confusing question.

Thanks,
Gary

I tried digging into the CSS route, but not being a "coder" of CSS or PHP I found myself not understanding what I was seeing nor did attempts to find/change the appropriate settings yield results I wanted. (i.e. aMember pages/content between the WP header and footer to adopt the current fluid width theme we had purchased from a 3rd party provider. (i.e. Neuro Pro - also, FYI that theme also as I recall had a minimum width and maximum width).

After numerous hours, we decided to create a new theme with theme creation software and chose "fixed width", just to make sure our content, some of which is delivered in HTML tables or iFrame embeds of flash video player object, just seemed to "behave better" when we control the width, not the browser.

Since our users will be on desktop or tablet/iPad browser with sufficient width to display our full page with, we just chose, for now, to go with fixed width theme. This took care of this issue for us.

I just thought I'd post an update to the "issue" where I first asked about it. Thanks for everyone's feedback!

Gary

PS: Best I could tell from two aMember sites that did what I wanted
www.amemberpress.com and www.theorganicsister.com
Using the Firefox browser Inpect Element function, I believe I visually found the "outermost" container for amember content of a WP page:
==> div.am-body-content-wrapper.am-main
The very next "outer" one from that was:
==> div#inner"

To my recollection, the Neuro Pro theme I mentioned didn't have "div#inner" as the "next" wrapper / container . . . I believe resulting in the aMember adopting browser width while WP Neuro Pro theme goes from Xpx min fluid to Ypx max (horizontally centered on page as most websites / themes are).

aMemberPress is my site. It is built on StudioPress's Genesis Framework using the Corporate child theme (as shown on my homepage, see image below). Corporate along with most other StudioPress themes is a fixed width theme.

During configuration of the aMember plugin I checked the box "Use WordPress theme". From that one setting all my aMember pages picked up my WordPress styling including header, menu bar, footer, background color, and fixed width. By checking one box, switching form the WordPress page to the aMember page was about 95% transparent.

I did make a few tweaks such as: changed the table header background image, dropped the aMember footer, and removed a little white space. I now consider the switch between the two pages to be virtually indistinguishable.

Unfortunately there is not a tight standard in WordPress themes. However, most major theme developers use coding practices that are consistent with the WordPress default themes. It has been my experience that the aMember integration works with all the major theme developers.

So, if the WordPress integration does not work properly, it is not necessary to write a theme from scratch. You have two simpler choices:

1. The absolute simplest solution is to choose a theme from a developer that is known to work, such as StudioPress (or most any other major theme developer)
2. Submit a support ticket and see if support can look at your theme's code and see it a fix is possible.

Credits Shown on aMemberPress Homepage

Just getting aMember to fit the fixed WP theme width - that alone - goes a LONG way to making it look truly integrated. I'd already removed the default aMember footer. Next, a change of the dark blue accents to match our site colors (a dark red, black, or silver) will round it out and really make it look integrated.

Yes, your aMember pages are virtually indistinguishable from your other ones.

As always, Grant, thanks for your detailed and thorough responses to everyone here on the forum.

Gary