The basic elements of my membership website are in place. I have a theme, a membership management plugin and a forum plugin. These are the basics needed for me to start the membership site I envision. All the basics are setup and appear to be functioning properly. I am sure a little fine tuning will be needed but I am good for now.
There are really two primary areas left: content, the biggie, and some general formatting changes. The content I am working on bit by bit as I decide I am in a writing mood. It’s actually not much writing but even a couple paragraphs takes time to write, read and edit (and read again and edit again). As far as formatting goes, I like the theme I selected but I do want to make some minor changes. The Platinum child theme for the StudioPress Genesis theme is very monochromatic, basically several shades of gray. I want the navigation titles to pop a little more than they do. The header title is also shorter than I would like. I do not have a logo or picture that I want to use in the header so I want the title to be a larger font size and a different font. In order to accomplish that I need a taller header.
A quick search of the StudioPress support forum and I find out that these chases are done in the cascading style sheet (CSS). I want try to explain CSS because I will probably mess it up but the style sheet basically controls the formatting of your site. If you want to change a font, border, etc. you will need to change the style sheet. You will find the style sheet under Appearance/Edit in your dashboard menu in Wordpress.
The style sheet is pretty long and you may not know what section to edit. My first changes were pretty minor and the support forum directed me to exactly what to change. My last change was not quite so clear; however, a forum post directed me to the solution, a Firefox add-on called Firebug. I’ll cover Firebug in my next post.
I am not sure why but Russians love them some spam (poor English intended). This site receives 4 or 5 spam content posts every two days, and this is not even an active site  . Approx. 99% of those comments come from somewhere in the former USSR.
Fortunately, I installed the spam plugin Akismet. I can’t recommend it enough. So far it has blocked all bad comments and no good ones (of course there has been far to few of those to this point). Make sure you install it early on in your site building process. Another plus…..it’s free.
Wishlist Member is truely a plugin. The actual install and activation was a breeze. You download, unzip, FTP it to your host and then activate it. Just like any other plugin. Setup was also a breeze. After going through the process I am fairly convinced that I made the right choice when selecting my membership program.
The thing that made the setup of Wishlist Member so easy was the video tutorials. The designers have an online video tutorial for each step of the setup process. I would watch a video and then do some set up, watch a video and do some set up, etc., etc. Basically it was rinse and repeat. Within a couple of hours I had the software setup so a prospective member could click on a Paypal button, submit a credit card payment and then set up their member account on my website. There was nothing difficult about it.
The software integrates with several different payment gateways and shopping carts. Since my site will only charge for memberships, the Paypal option seemed to be the best, plus I already had a Paypal account. My only concern was would the prospective member need a Paypal account as well. Thankfully, they do not. They can pay by credit card or Paypal. The member only needs an account if they are signing up for a recurring membership, which I do not plan to offer at first. Paypal manages the recurring payment process, not Wishlist.
Wishlist Member offers unlimited Membership levels. Once you set up your levels you set up a payment button through Paypal which provides the required HTML coded button for your member to click that will direct them to the payment screen. I set up a free membership for my initial member campaign and then I set up a paid membership for the second wave (I am planning on recruiting 100 “Charter” members to try to start the ball rolling). I was able to set the length of the free membership and then have it automatically upgrade those members to the next level once the initial subscription period expired.
The name of the software is odd but the product is a good one. The interface blends right in with Wordpress. It looks like it belongs, which was the thing that turned me off about a few of the other membership plugins. Everything is straight forward and easy to understand, especially with the videos. My only disappointment was the inability of the software to manage an affiliate program among my members to encourage them to recruit additional members. I logged a support ticket and found out that the developers a testing an integration with a software that can perform this function. That would be a great plus.
By the way, the support ticket was logged on Sunday and I received a response on Monday morning. Another plus for Wishlist!
I was recently involved in a discussion on LinkedIn regarding Wordpress themes and the Atahualpa theme kept getting mentioned as a great free theme that offered a lot of flexibility. At first glance I did not care for the theme and ruled it out for my membership site as the settings/options appear to be too overwhelming for a novice. I have decided to install that theme on this blog just to try it out and see if my first impressions were accurate. If you are visiting this site on a regular basis (thanks, by the way), you may notice some format changes from time to time as I play with this theme. It probably want be too often as I should be spending most of my time developing my membership site.
In order to have a membership site, you need membership software. Oh, you can have people join your blog/site without it but not if you want to charge a fee to join. Of course, if possible I want the software to be a Wordpress plugin. I’m a newbie so I need simple integration. Google membership software and you get a bunch of hits. Google Wordpress membership plugin and you will comeback with about 5 options (but multiple hits when you include all the affiliate sites).
Following are the 5 (each met my basic requirements from the last post) and my take on each:
Digital Access Pass – $97. Appears to be one of the newer ones but still a couple years old. Very robust features. Geared very much towards multiple membership levels and “dripping” content for additional revenue. Does offer an internal affiliate management component which is a positive (I can get members to recruit new members). Offers a free trial which none of the others did. Developer was very responsive to my e-mail. User interface not as strong a Wishlist.
MemberWing – $149. The developer is active in several forums on the topic. It appears he will actively support his product. Product appears to be capable of a lot (probably more than I need). You protect pages, comments and post by adding a tag in the content (I’d prefer a check box). Weak demo and admin panel was more confusing than Wishlist. Cost differential is also something I can’t get past, especially for my basic needs.
Wishlist Member – $97. This appears to be the most established and widely used of the five. Support forum and video tutorials (I love these). Comments on the web were mostly positive. I found a mention in an online interview that they have posted that they work well with SimplePress. User interface is excellent and content protection easy.
WP-Member – $50. While it appears to be relatively established, I found a couple of negative threads so I did not give it much consideration after that.
Your Members – $50. Developed in the UK. Relatively new is the impression I got. Some screen shots on the site but limited examples. The plugin does manage coupons to members and affiliates which did appeal to me. Support forum appears to be relatively active. Nice price.
Decision: You have probably figured it out. I just purchased Wishlist Member. I was sold when I watched the first video tutorial. The user interface blends right in with the rest of Wordpress and the setup appeared unbelievably easy. A couple of the others offered more features but this one hit the basic requirements, is well established, and walks you through the entire setup with the tutorials. It really helps to see the product in action before you purchase, even if it is a video. My number two choice was Digital Access Pass. The built-in affiliate management piece was very appealing. A weaker interface and a slightly more complex way of protecting content held it back. Wishlist just seemed so easy to setup and maintain.
While messing with themes and posting on this site, I am also researching membership software for Wordpress. It is the last software component I think I need to have functioning site. There are stand alone software packages out there for membership management that you can integrate with Wordpress but it appears that there are plugins that can do the job as well. Now that I have experience with the Simple:Press plugin and other plugins, I like the easy integration they provide.
I need the plugin to integrate the Wordpress for member names and setup, to limit access to content to paid members only and to integrate with Paypal or some other credit card processor. Those are the minimum requirements. Anything else is gravy.
It appears that I have 5 contenders: MemberWing, Wishlist Member, Your Members, Digital Access Pass and WP-Member. I’ll discuss the pluses and minuses of each in my next post. Again, any input you may have is appreciated.
StudioPress’s Platinum theme is a child theme for the Genesis theme. Basically the formatting is set on a framework and you can change out the formatting with different child themes but the frame remains. I think I got that right. I mention that because I had a question when it came time to load the themes. I had to download two different themes, Genesis and Platinum. Genesis will work without Platinum but not visa versa. But how can I load both to my web host and then activate both?
I made a quick search of the support forum and found the answer (I also posted a message to one of he moderators and received a quick reply but after I found the answer on my own — so far I have been pleased with the response time of all my providers). You load both themes but you only need to activate the child theme. The child theme takes it from there and pulls the information it needs from the parent.
The download and upload process went without a hitch. I copied the to files to my local pc, unzipped the files and then FTP’d them up to the host. No problems. This is really pretty darned easy. I worry less and less.
I activated the Platinum theme and checked certain options and set the layout. All pretty easy and straight forward. I have decided I want to play with the fonts and the colors and that I want to make the header a little wider. I guess nothing is perfect right out of the box but now I am going to have to step outside my comfort zone and start messing with code………scary.
I found out that LinkedIn has a very active Wordpress group that covers a wide range of topics. Excellent resource for Wordpress information and opinion.
I chose StudioPress for the Wordpress theme on my membership site. I originally found a theme I liked at Elegant Themes. After sending an email to the developer, I ruled that out Elegant themes due to the lack of flexibility in the format. As I noted earlier, my site is going to have a Simple:Press forum. After installing the forum, I decided I need a wide format (no sidebar) on the forum page of the site. The forum looks too cramped to me when there is a normal sidebar. Too bad as Elegant Themes has some nice looking themes and the cost is only $20.
With an eye to flexible page structure, I began looking at Woo Themes’s Canvas, iThemes’s Flexx, Thesis, StudioPress’s Genesis and a free theme called Atahualpa. The Canvas, Thesis and Atahualpa themes seemed to provide too much flexibility. You control almost all the graphic formatting. While you could probably design one heck of a website, the time required would be too great. I needed to find something that had nice graphics already established so all I had to play with was layout, i.e. header, sidebars and footers. The Flexx and Genesis themes seem to fit the bill.
Once I get my membership site up and running I may take the time to tailor a site that suits me better. If I do that, I will probably go with Canvas from Woo Themes. The formatting options are clear and easy to understand and seem to be suited for someone with no coding experience. It just has too many options for someone with little experience that is in a hurry.
The final choice came down to two options, Platinum from StudioPress and Flexx from iThemes. They both have nice formatting in place and your primary flexibility is in multiple page layout options. Both companies are well established and highly recommended. Both also appeared to offer nice support, much through support forums. Simple:Press actually uses a StudioPress Theme and one of the membership plugin providers actually appeared to work with iThemes. Both cost about $79.
Decision: The Genesis Platinum theme from StudioPress by a nose. Both iThemes and StudioPress offer the flexibility I want, variable page formats and pages and categories in separate nav bars . It came down the graphics in the sidebar. I like the look of the sidebar with the Platinum themes. That’s how close a call it was.
After looking and looking, I finally decided on a theme for my Wordpress membership site. I’ll cover the decision making process in my next post. I was looking for something that was somewhat flexible in layout but did not require too much customization to get a professional look. I am behind where I would like to be on site development and I want to get up and running as soon as possible.
It came down to three or four options but I finally decided on Studiopress’s Genesis framework and the Platinum child theme. It appears to give me all that I want in a layout without requiring an excessive amount of customization. The more I looked the more I decided I wanted built in to the theme. The Studiopress themes seemed to fit the bill the best. I could not find a free theme that would work and $80 seemed to be the market rate and a fair price for a premium theme. More in my next post.
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It might be best to start at the bottom. Until I figure out how to reverse my posts, you may want to slide down to the bottom if you are reading this blog for the first time. It will give you a better flavor of the process I am going through.
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