Hello, I'm interested in aMember Pro, but I want to see if it can do what I want it to do first. We want our site to be similar to the srt owners club, where they purchase a membership using aMember Pro, and then they get a small icon next to their forum name on srtforums.com. Currently we're using phpBB, but we are considering moving to vBulletin to implement a system like this. I know vBulletin has its own subscription system built into it, so what makes aMember Pro better, and worth the money? I just want to be able to sell a membership to the online club, and have it give them access to special sections of the forums, a little icon under their name, maybe access to a photo-hosting like gallery2 or photopost, etc. Is aMember Pro the best way to do this? Thanks!
Anyone should decide for yourself what is the best way, so I can only talk about facts. If features and supported payment systems list of built-in vBulletin subscription engine is enough for you, if you don't need to protect static HTML content to make it available for members only, then you don't need aMember. In other case, aMember will do this and many other things well.
I was unaware that aMember can protect static content as well...how does it do that? using .htaccess?
Yes, there are smart ways to protect any static content and downloads and provide HTML login form. aMember does it by writing .htaccess into protected folder.