Hi Gang, I have read through the forums and had a LOT of questions answered, but some things are nagging me. I know, everyone thinks their installation will be different, but here's what I can't seem to get answered so far: 1. Can Amember handle multiple sites with one login? My business plan calls for one central Joomla site, and multiple mini-sites on different domains. I would like to be able to handle registration in one central place, so anyone with appropriate level of membership to the Joomla site will have access to all mini sites. Vice versa, if someone registers on one of the minisites, I want the Joomla site to be able to recognize them, and give them access to a specified level. Is this possible? I don't know if this helps, but I can use 'parked' domains on my server, and assign them to folders. So effectively I could have all my minisites with own domains, pointing to folders on the same server as my Joomla site. This may make it easy to keep SQL databases current? 2. I know Amember can handle different user levels, but how does this integrate with Joomla? For example, I want to create access level to forums, but not downloads, or archives but not downloads, how does this work with Amember? 3. Will I be looking at a custom install based on what I am trying to acheive? I know it sounds like a mess, but that's what I am trying to acheive, and if Amember can do it, then I'm all for it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! DJ PS: Any current Amember/Joomla users want to chime in with your experience of these two working together, feel free! Or point me in the right direction? Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
Additional info... Just wondering if anyone knows if the 'Wrapper' component in Joomla can be used to show the Amember signup page? Or does this have to be completely seperate? It would be handy if the Amemeber signup page could be called into the wrapper to create a seamless appearance of integration. DJ
Go on - I will have the first go at answering some of these.. Ok, thinking off the top of my head on this: Assuming each of your Joomla installs runs from a separate database (so you have joomla1.users, joomla2.users etc, I suppose you could make multiple copies of the Joomla plugin, each directed to a specific minisite. That way your users would be kept up to date from a single membership database. I don't know how quickly you would see a performance hit though. The Joomla plugin only transfers information from aMember to Joomla not the other way around, so if a user came to a minisite, they would need to be register via your aMember installation at whatever domain that is parked at. Different user levels are more difficult, aMember handles them just fine but Joomla currently only has guest, paid-up registered and expired/unpaid registered levels. You could look at the Community Builder extension perhaps? Have a look at http://www.pnirs.org for an integration of aMember with Joomla. You mentioned using the wrapper. You could do that but perhaps better would be to modify the aMember templates/header.html and footer.html files to fit your sites look. I recently posted a guide to doing this somewhere else on this forum.
WOW, thanks Ian, and can I say that's a great looking site. The integration of Amember is seamless, and looks amazing. Thank you for your answer as well, it gave me some great food for thought. I would like to try and simplify the process if I can, and I wonder if this would work? If I use the Community Builder module of Joomla, and the CB plugin from Amember, that gives me the ability to set different levels of acces than the usual, free, registered, expired set. That sounds great. I am a little unsure of what you mean by using different databases per installation of Joomla, only in that I envisioned only needing one installation of Joomla on my main site. The mini sites would not run Joomla, just the plain html or php they are built with, and contain the content the user purchased. What I wanted the minisites to do was act as remote membership generators if you like. When a user enters Site B (Site A being the Joomla site) and signs up there, their user data would be stored in the main Site A database as say User 2 level. (User 1 level being a free level) So I would have: Site A [Joomla site] : User 1 (free), User 2 (registered), User 3 (custom level) Site B [non-Joomla] : User 2 Site C [non-Joomla] : User 2 etc... That way I can use Sites B, C, D etc to give access to Site A on a registered level, as well as access to the content they purchased from whichever Site B,C or D they entered originally. For example, customer buys Site B content and is also granted access to Site A at User 2 level. It would be awesome if it worked in reverse also, allowing User 3 access to all sites, A, B, C, D etc.... all using one central login/access process. I can see it work in my mind in the plan, I am just wondering about how to go about the execution of the scripts. I only want one set of membership details that covers all sites, so I have one point of management for all users. I hope that clarified my idea a little, as I said, I can see it in my mind, Im just having trouble translating it to the 'how' it would work. Would it be worth having Amember create a custom setup for me?
Hi, My comment on having different databases per installation of Joomla was an off the cuff thought wondering whether the following could be made to work: www.example.com Your main (Joomla) website including the aMember installation but probably no real content; contentA.example.com A stand-alone Joomla website with its own database in a subdomain of your website and containing content A contentB.example.com A stand-alone Joomla website with its own database in a subdomain of your website and containing content B You could then have three copies of the Joomla plugin in your one aMember installation updating each of the three separate Joomla websites. Because the users tables for Joomla A and Joomla B are separate, I wondered if, in principle, you could have some users who are enabled for Content A but not for Content B and vice versa. With the Joomla Cloner component (I think thats it's name) the above might be easier to put together. Having said all that, if your budget stretches to it you may want to get a custom-built web application that meets your needs instead! Thanks for the positive comment on the site BTW, much appreciated. Ian
Thanks for your answers guys, I really appreciate the feedback. It seems I may have to end up with a custom application for what I need to do. Either that or re-think my strategy on what I want t accomplish witht he application. Again, thanks for the awesome support! DJ