Hi everyone, I've decided that amember will do what I need for my current project but can't decide whether to go with Joomla or WordPress as my CMS. A lot of people seem to prefer the Joomla route, but I've used WorkPress on a couple of blogs so I'll have less of a learning curve. Can anyone help by advising on the pros, cons and differences between them (and the ease of integration with amember)? Thanks in advance Jon UK
For greater flexibility, multiple levels of membership, larger number of extensions (plugins), I find Joomla better. Joomla does have a larger learning curve but I find it much more powerful. For ease of setup, a simple public/private membership site, wordpress works fine. Wordpress is quick to setup and use. Ease of integration- thats gonna depend slightly on your design. If you put wordpress behind a "walled garden" (only private access to the blog) its fast to integrate, maybe 3 hours without any mistakes. If you want to use the "magazine model" (teaser text) that takes a couple of extra plugins. I'd say about 3-5 hours. Joomla with a single public / registered level of access, about 3-5 hours. With multiple levels, 6-8 hours. Note: including cms install time, includes adding a little content for testing. David
Thanks David, My design thoughts are: 1) Mainly a number of articles about my niche (freely available as any typical blog) 2) Initially have 1 or 2 products behind amember, each one would consist of 10-20 'pages' comprising articles, flash audio and camtasia-type flash video, plus 1-2 downloadable files. 3) The thought of having a 'teaser' for every page (for both the free stuff and the paid products), and only members being able to access the more detailed information for the non-free stuff, after the <read more> tag is very appealing. So I guess that's the 'magazine model' whatever one of those is (though I can guess ;-) ) 4) If things take off as I hope, I would see the number of products increasing to a library of training and templates related to my niche. Each one being purchased separately as a one-off (not a recurring). So. taking these design thoughts into consideration, I guess that Joomla looks like the most practical solution Cheers Jon UK
Answering my own questions (again)... I've discovered the answers (having joined membershipacademy and watched some of the videos): The biggest restriction with WordPress is that the 'HidePost' plugin means you can only have one membership level: you can either see the protected content or you can't, there's no levels of different membership (silver, gold, etc.) As I need more than one level, it means Joomla is the way fwd for this little project Hope this may help others..
As an update- I have figured out how to get multiple levels. You use the plugins hidepost and role-manager in combination. Really good news for people who prefer wordpress! Check out my demo site. David
how have you managed to make this system work with WP 2.5, as hidepost is only compatible upto 2.3 Also, with this setup I'm assuming your using the amember WP plugin (the $40 one) cheers