Recommended Plugins for Paid Membership+Private Videos+Social+Courseware Site?

  • Howdy,

    My wife and I are planning what is probably our most ambitious website build to date. Also, while I’ve been using WordPress to build sites since it was first released, I’ve been away a few years raising my daughter and boy have things changed.

    I’m looking for advice from other WordPress admins and developers on the best direction to head down for a site that needs the following:

    1. Paid membership with dripped content and multiple levels AND reasonable prices.

    2. Video protection to keep the video tutorials for members only.

    3. A forum, nothing fancy needed here.

    4. All the social networking capabilities we can get our hands on.

    These last two may not be necessary but we’d like to look into them and if it’s not too much of a hassle to integrate, and not overpriced for what will likely remain a small website with only ever a few hundred members at most, then we’d like to get them.

    5. Event registration for free events. The capability for paid events would be nice but is not necessary at this time.

    6. Courseware. Something simple. A way to provide lessons and simple quizzes and keep track of scoring for the user.

    It’s a lot, I know. We’d be happy to start with the first four though.

    And, it all seems to hinge on choosing the right membership plugin.

    I was leaning towards s2Member, Amazon s3 for video and Buddypress.

    However, I fell for that superhero marketing and just signed up to WPMU DEV. I have to say, you can’t market like that and then under-deliver! It’s a huge disappointment. The plugins aren’t’ really set up to work together. And, the support staff has some kind of weird attitude where they pretend they’re still amazing while failing, which could be seen as cute, if they were mostly knowledgeable, or helpful. I haven’t had that impression.
    And, then I looked up reviews on them, like I should have done first, and boy did I find some terrible allegations about them. We definitely need another solution.

    Thanks to all who read this. Thank you more if you replied. Kisses and Hugs if you’re the real deal and you tell me what you’d do in this situation. ??

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • 1. There are lots of membership plugins in the repo that will do exactly that. I use Membership2.

    2. If you put video protection behind your paywall (your membership plugin), then #2 shouldn’t be much of an issue.

    3. bbPress

    4. What do you mean by social media capabilities? There are lots of plugins that will provide links to social media sharing, and Jetpack will post automatically for you.

    5. + 6. There are lots of plugins for these, as well. Have you actually searched through the plugin repo yet?

    Thread Starter Awesome0

    (@awesome0)

    Thanks for your input. Did you read my question though? Membership 2 and that overpriced poorly executed business is exactly what I’m currently fleeing.

    Been searching for weeks and have looked at almost everything available in the repo, plus all the paid stuff. The current sad state of affairs in the open source world seems to point towards having to buy a plugin to get a solid enough tool with which to run a business.

    Numbers 5 and 6 are only there in case it will effect our choices in numbers 1 through 4. I hope that clears things up.

    Thread Starter Awesome0

    (@awesome0)

    Oh, and by social media capabilities we mean the capabilities social network sites have for their members, not things like connecting anything to that abomination, facebook, or anything similar.

    We realize that’s a lot and will likely have to use several plugins and some custom code to get what we want in the end. But, we can do that. Just need a starting point. Buddypress seems like that point so far. But, I’d rather hear from the experts who have actually been in the trenches the past few years.

    Thanks

    the capabilities social network sites have for their members

    This is very non-specific. There are hundreds of social network sites, and they all offer something different.

    Did you read my question though? Membership 2 and that overpriced poorly executed business is exactly what I’m currently fleeing.

    Yes, I did, and no, you didn’t mention that plugin in your original post.

    It’s quite possible that WordPress is not the CMS you are looking for. Drupal has a number of plugins available; maybe some of those would work for you.

    Thread Starter Awesome0

    (@awesome0)

    Maybe we can get over the complexity thing a little?

    Sure, there would be a lot of moving parts. But, that’s no reason to get bogged down in needing endless details about social features to recommend something to use as a decent membership plugin.

    I’m starting to feel like I made a special order at a drive-thu window. ha There used to be tons of smart people here. Where’d everybody go?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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