Wordpress with amember

Hi, I am trying to test out amember with wordpress with the free trial. I am getting into some problems trying to set it up. I am not an advanced technical wiz but can follow instructions well.

My question is, does it take alot on knowledge to set this thing up?

I keep running into problems. I had to set up the php.ini file with my webhost and some of the subfolders won't work unless I copy it into each subfolder. Is this right and if so how do I know which subfolders to upload the file into? i didn't see any instructions of the subfolders that need it.

Also, after signing up to the forum, it showed a list of products that I could choose. Do I have to also purchase the wordpress plugin inorder for amember to work for my site?

check out my signature for a demo of how to structure a wordpress/amember site.

I place wordpress in the root, and amember in a subdirectory called /members/

David

thanks. Do I need to purchase a plugin from amember also?

This depends on how you want to integrate Wordpress and aMember.

aMember's Plugin

The WordPress plugin, available from the aMember site, allows you to set a user's role on WordPress based on a membership product in aMember. For example, Product A could set a user's role to "Subscriber" on the WordPress site and Product B could set a user's role to "Author" on the WordPress site, etc.

You could use additional plugins to establish a membership area based on a WordPress user's role but there is a better way to do this, using the amProtect WordPress plugin.

amProtect WordpPress Plugin

Ken Gary's amProtect WordPress plugin will allow you to hide entire pages and posts (even portions of a page or post) based on a WordPress user's active memberships in aMember. This plugin works great and allows you to design in a lot of membership based models on your WordPress site.

Summary

You can use either of these plugins or both of these plugins. On my site, I use both. I want users to be able to register and then comment on posts as a registered user, which is accomplished using the aMember plugin. I will also use amProtect to restrict a portion of my WordPress site to those with premium memberships.

Good Luck!

thanks. I am trying to decide between Amember or Wishlist for my wordpress site. Do you by any chance know what the differences between them are?

By the way, you have a nice site.

Again, it depends on what features you want. If you want basic membership features and a limited number of supported CC providers, then maybe Wishlist is all you need. It certainly would be easier to install and maintain over upgrades.

But, if you want a mature software package that offers a comprehensive feature set, then the aMember integration is a better choice.

Just a few of the features supported by aMember that I don't think are supported by WishList are:

• Coupons (This one feature is huge)
• More emailing features
• Tracks for the sharing of a login
• The ability to add more software packages to your site that are also controlled by aMember (such as phpBB, vBulliten, mailing lists, etc).
• A large and vibrant pluin community (both aMember & independent)
• A large and vibrant support forum.

Thanks

Grant gives a good list of the major differences between aMember and WishList Member.

It's important to also know that right now WishList member only supports a handful of payment options and none of them include taking credit cards directly with someone like Authorize.NET. With WishList you can use PayPal, ClickBank or 1ShoppingCart.com. These are admittedly the majority of what everyone uses and they are just getting started so they may be adding new ones in the future but you never know.

aMember already supports over 60 payment processors with payment plugins that are included for free so you have a much better chance of finding a solution that fits you. It's also better for you in case something weird happens with your PayPal account and you suddenly find yourself needing to switch to something else immediately.

WishList Member doesn't have it's own affiliate program built in like aMember does. I've heard recently that they have an iDevAffiliate integration in beta.

And again, I think maybe one of the biggest things Grant mentioned was the fact that WishList Member does not really integrate with very many other software packages. For a basic membership site it is really good. Pretty much whatever kind of plugin you can find for WordPress will probably be able to be integrated some way with WishList Member.

But if you want to allow your members access to something outside of WordPress, like a support desk, or a particular forum, you are pretty much out of luck right now. But with aMember you have dozens and dozens of plugins available to you (usually at a modest additional cost) that will usually not only add and manage users in these remote systems but actually seamlessly integrate the login process using one userid/password with aMember as well.

And of course the WishList Member code is encrypted and does not allow plugins like aMember does. I'm a third-party aMember plugin developer so I can't do customizations for the WishList Member community like I can for the aMember community. I'm finding ways to come up with WordPress plugins that can sort of piggyback onto the WishList Member database settings but that's about all I can do there.

If you want some of the really cool things that people have come up with for an aMember membership site you're going to have to convince the developers at WishList Member to upgrade their software for you and wait for them to do it.

What WishList Member is doing with WordPress is really, really cool. There are new things happening with it all the time. I really love WordPress and it's my favorite way to put together a membership site. I wrote the amProtect plugin for WordPress to help close the gap between what WishList Member is offering and what aMember owners wish they could do with WordPress so that they don't have to switch over to WishList just to get those features and so that if they need the additional capabilities of aMember they can still have (most of) the cool features of WishList Member.

I've been planning on publishing an article with a side-by-side comparison of the two for a while now and I still need to get around to doing it.

And I agree with you ericwoo, Grant has a nice site!

Awesome, thanks for both of your help. I really apprecate it.

What is the main reason that some people prefer to accept payment on their own site rather than payment processors like paypal?

The fees mostly.