• Desmond Ong (desmondblog.com):
  - Discount coupon codes for my membership site. They can get a cheaper subscription if they use a certain code.
  - One-time LIFETIME membership payment mode.
  • Answer:
    Both of these features could be implemented via e-junkie. E-junkie is an inexpensive “digital” shopping cart that is supported by MemberWing. It cost starting from $5 flat monthly. You may create a product at e-junkie named “Lifetime Membership” and integrate it with MemberWing so upon payment user will get logon immediately. Then use your e-junkie admin interface to generate discount coupon or gift certificate that users name be able to enter at checkout. It could be %-based, $-based, single use, multiple use, have expirations date, etc.. - very flexible and you can change it at any time to reflect current promotions.
    The only problem is that all will only work with single payment type of membership, not with recurring. E-junkie does not support recurring yet.
    Paypal supports entering coupons at a checkout but does not support generating coupons yet for reasons beyond me.
• Nikola Jankovic (peomedia.com):
  - recurring payment option
  - affiliate program for recurring payment
  - 2checkout payments
  • Answer:
    Recurring payments is supported via Paypal, and full membership automation is supported in MemberWing premium editions. Recurring payments + affiliate program is supported via PayDotCom. We are in process of integrating MemberWing with self-hosted scripts such as Post Affiliate Pro - coming soon.
    2Checkout payments are supported via e-junkie. The only thing to remember that e-junkie does not support recurring payments, although if you are ok with one-time membership scheme - it is great solution.
• Kevin at IT Europe:
  1. Removal of the branding on the free version.
  2. Integration with Community Builder.
  • Answer:
    Branding removal is of course possible but not with free version. That’s minor inconvenience that allows us to release and update free version and for you to launch fully featured membership site in minutes. Professional Editions of MemberWing all has branding removed.
    Community Builder I think is from Joomla world. While MemberWing is for Wordpress only for now - but in a future we might look into partnerships with able Joomla guys to bring simplicity and power of MemberWing to Joomla as well. Not there yet though.
• Eric Scouten:
  1. I’m not interested in having multiple levels of membership and that seems to be pretty thoroughly built into MW.
  2. The state that I live in (Washington) requires that I collect sales tax for WA residents when selling access to digital downloads …
  • Answer:
    1. MW does support 4 levels of membership but it doesn’t mean you have to use all of them. You may use only 1 - no problems. It’s like owning BMW M5 - it can go to 238 km/h, but you don’t really have to drive that fast at all times. But potential is there in case you need it.
    2. Eric concerned about matching tax collections with local state requirements. This could be done via sophisticated shopping carts that might be aware of USA and local state tax codes. MemberWing does not do any shopping-carting and it won’t help you to buy more taxes for sure.
• Jobmass. com:
  I’m using another plug-in to restrict access to certain posts and pages- the user has to log in first.
  Would be great to incorporate this feature into memberwing
  • Answer:
    That’s EXACTLY what MemberWing does. And it’s basic version is free even!
• Likvid Design:
  Many people have subscriptions to tech sites from corporate accounts. This means that they’d like:
  - roaming accounts not locked to an email address
  - a good way to track and print receipts and invoices, preferably with billing history.
  It would be super if these features are added in.
  This is a great product! All the best to you.
  • Answer:
    MemberWing is not roaming account-aware app at this point. And definitely not going to be a competitor to Quickbooks or so for receipts/invoices/billing history tracking.
    What I see in a future is a possiblity of integration with other community softwares, like forums so that user will have single point payment and same login at different screens. Thank you for the kind words as well!
• Auntie Jo:
  That one is easy - based on a question I asked just a little while ago.
  I like the ease of use of the “content markers” - so simple to set up!
  BUT I would like a feature where you could (if necessary) use ALL markers on a single page/post - to enable you to give your members an ever increasing view of the post/page depending on their level of membership.
  i.e on the same page or post .
  • Answer:
    Auntie is talking about having post like that:
    …Free content {+}Bronze content {++}Now silver content {+++} And this one is for Gold members only, etc…
    Auntie, sincerely I was going to start with excuses “why it’s not possible…blah”, but then decided to look into code
    So the real answer is - it is possible to do and will take me about 3 hours to implement which I currently don’t have. If I will see more commercial interest in this feature - it might happen. Cannot give any promises regarding this feature yet.
• Daniel Correa:
  Hello
  I appreciate so much this plugin and it’s very util to me.
  The answer 1) The capacibility to work with 4 kinds of member, because it’s perfect to my model
  2) Im brasilian and have working with a brasilian payment system called pagseguro (http://pagseguro.uol.com.br) . Works like paypal, and I wish a automatic system to control de payment of users. Actually is a manual process. Im not using paypal becaus it’s very hard to transfer money to my country.
  • Answer:
    Sorry Daniel, no plans to implement this Brazilian payment system for now.
• Merka Dabzil:
  OK folks - here you go!
  - keep it simple. No need for another aMember…
  - maybe a module for safe (paid) downloads that can’t get ripped by any wannabe G00gle h4xx0r…
  - Only for Wordpress. Period. And Wordpress fully supported.
  - its cool you offer a version for free - but mentioning that it seems to be completely half-assed even without Paypal support only AFTER the download is somewhat… well, did encourage me not to install it. I would prefer a fully working time-limited trial so I can really decide what I am going to pay for.
  - option for fixed-term membership sites. No automatic infinite subscription, but limited to 12 months or 53 weeks of newsletter etc.
  …. ‘k, thats it for now…
  Seems to me like you almost nailed it. Some polishing, and this should do very well - there is a lot of demand for a simple and WORKING WP membership plugin.
  Cheers and keep up the great work!
  • Answer:
    - Safe downloads “module” is perfectly handled by ejunkie with which MemberWing works well. So the answer here is “yes”.
    - Wordpress *is* indeed.
    - Well free version does support paypal but of course you’d need to add/remove users manually.
    - Option for what you name “fix term” membership sites is fully supported by Paypal “Buy”, “Pay now” buttons as well as via e-junkie’s facilities, as well as via PayDotCom affiliate network.
    Full automation of payments+users for above features is supported by MemberWing Professional
    - …and you’re right about polishing - doing it almost non-stop!
• Phil Meyer:
  One feature which I think would be pretty great would be to optionally allow one’s members to post on the blog, and in doing so:
  * set how many times a member (according to level, but possible individual override) can post within a selected timeframe;
  * select whether a member’s post should be published immediately or pend review (according to level, but possible individual override - possibly also a “trust” system whereby a member’s posts are automatically published after x number of successful posts);
  * possibility to sell the ability to post at various levels to non-members.
  Something like that…
  • Answer:
    These are interesting community-like features. At this point MemberWing offers webmaster to be the only publisher of premium contents. No prerequisites for managing other members publishing credentials. Thanks for letting me know about your features of interest though.
• Dan Ashton:
  The ability to release new content every month would be great, so that someone joining six months after someone else only gets to see Month 1 content, for example).
  • Answer:
    Brownie point for Dan - he was first
    This is the next big feature that it currently in the works to get into the next major release of MemberWing. The only thing is once this feature will be announced - the cost of MemberWing Premium will go up big time - so to lock your cost base and get this feature - order Pro version *before* the announcement.
• Ron Taggy:
  This plugin totally rocks…I have a big requirement and this is the main one that’s preventing me from using it completely on all my sites…
  * The ability to drip content, so members don’t get access to all the content at the same time. So, let’s say, I put out new content every single month. When someone joins today, I only want him to see Month 1 content and not everything at the same time. Each month, he will get access to the next set of content etc
  • Answer:
    You’ll get it. See my answer to Dan Ashton above.

• Erlend Førsund:

  The biggest challenge in creating a membership site I think is to set up the payment functions with paypal.
  Some kind of tutorial or service would be very welcome.
  Erlend (Norway)
  • Answer:
    I do plan to put more detailed step by step tutorials on setting up paypal and other payment processors and affiliate networks. Step by step - more good stuff will come soon!

More answers will be coming soon!

Which hosting service provider to choose?

After trying handful of hosting providers over the years I gradually moving my sites and blogs to Hostgator. I spent quite a long time hosting with plethora of overpriced providers ending with 1and1 in 2002. While they (1&1) do receive their share of online flames they were doing rather ok for my needs.
Last year I discovered and was actually impressed by the performance of websites hosted off hostgator’s simple shared account. I signed up with them and on quite a few occasions was pleasantly surprised by the quality of their tech support. These guys are really willing to take extra steps to solve your issues.  And also have to admit that 80% of my blames to them were actually ended up being caused by either my own actions or crippled environments I was working from.
Also little known fact – Hostgator offers dedicated IP address for only $2/mo. Having dedicated IP address (note – not the same as dedicated server) allows you to run your site and feel safe that no spammers or porn is sharing same IP  with you. Also this is good way to hide your online business project locations from spies and nosy competitors who are always sniffing for opportunities.
Hostgator also offers “reseller” accounts where you can become you own “little hosting” provider for your clients.

Anyways - if you are looking for hosting provider – you got a choice to consider.
I also strongly recommend choosing hosting provider that offers SSH (secure shell) access with SVN available. Having SSH access gives you capability to upload and download files to your website securely.
SVN(subversion version control system) gives you capability to install and upgrade Wordpress in seconds instead of going through painstaking FTP based multi-step procedures. Installing and upgrading wordpress using SSH+SVN is easy, fast, secure and quick. I no longer use FTP for these purposes.

Installing Wordpress. The Right Way.

I presume that you’ve already opened an account with your hosting provider. Normally you install Wordpress in either of 3 ways:

1. Using hoster’s control panel (usually Fantastico app panel). This does it all for you, but I never used it as I wanted to make sure I know what goes where and how. Fantastico is for whimps.
2. Using FTP download. Get files to your local computer, extract and then copy them to remote. Takes long time and too many steps. For unaware webmasters. Here are instructions if word “ftp” feels warm for you: Install wordpress using FTP.
3. Using SSH/SVN. For cool geeky-ish webmasters. Da best.

I strongly suggest using the latter method as it is fastest, most secure and allows easy upgrade of wordpress installs down the road in the most straightforward fashion. And hence i’ll describe it in a bit more details.
First you will need to create MySQL database for your wordpress + user account (with username/password access to database). Hostgator’s and any other standard Cpanel is perfectly suitable for this need. 1and1’s panel is clunky, slow, old, non-standard and sucks – and that is one of the reason I am moving away from them gradually. Although it definitely does it too.
After creating database and user account we proceed with actual Wordpress install and configuration.

So here we proceeding with SSH/SVN sequence:
If you run Windows locally (like I do) I suggest using PUTTY – SSH client for windows. Download and install putty.
Run Putty and connect it to your hoster’s IP address, port (Hostgator usually gives you port 2222 for shell) type your userid and password.
Once logged in – get into the root folder of your website. If you are hosting with Hostgator – it is most likely ‘public_html’:

 $ cd public_html

Once there – issue a command to retrieve the latest stable version of Wordpress.
NOTE: For exact command syntax please refer to this page under “New Install” subsection as you will need to adjust actual command syntax for the most recent stable version number:

 $ svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7 .

It will normally take just a few seconds to download the complete set of Wordpress files.
Once done – rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php:

 $ mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

After that edit wp-config.php file and include your database and user’s parameters into it. I really think Wordpress could make this step a bit more user friendly for beginners, just like other mature CMS-es do.
Use ‘nano’ – a little kinda user-friendly editor for mortals. If you’re immortal with long beard – ‘vi’ editor is an option too. ‘vi’ is not recommended for mortals as it drives people to suicides after realizing that doing very simple things (like moving cursor or deleting 1 character) actually requires memorizing violently long and convoluted sequences of obscure combinations of unintuitive buttons.

 $ nano wp-config.php

Insert proper names for database, username and password that you’ve created previously:
…….
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘your_db_name‘);

/** MySQL database username */
define(’DB_USER’, ‘your_db_user_name‘);

/** MySQL database password */
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘PassW0rd‘);

/** MySQL hostname */
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost‘);
…….

Save (Ctrl+O, [Enter]) and exit (Ctrl+X).

You’re almost ready.
Launch your browser and navigate to your website:
http://www.your-domain.com/
Wordpress will guide you through few initial steps installing and configuring your blog and your ‘admin’ account and giving you obscure looking password.
For the very first step I suggest to login with your admin account to control panel and change your main admin’s account password.
Go ahead, login and at dashboard go to:
Users->”admin” and change password to something more meaningful for you.

You are done with initial install and configuration of your Wordpress!

Few notes about upgrading Wordpress and old-style installs of Wordpress.

Wordpress is constantly improving, new releases and bug fixes are happening every so often.
When your wordpress blog is installed using SVN method the upgrades are one-line easy.
When you need to upgrade Wordpress just do this:

1. Login to your website using SSH / Putty as described above.
2. Enter into the root directory of your domain.
3. Issue this command:

   $ svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7/ .

   Please note that version number will need to be adjusted to the most recent – always refer to this Wordpress Upgrade Instructions page for the exact version.

4. Access this page from your browser:
   http://www.your-domain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php
5. Done!

If you have Wordpress-based portal that has been installed using traditional FTP methods it would be a good idea to “convert” it to SVN-type install to make your life easier to do further Wordpress upgrades down the road. This procedure described quite well in details at Wordpress site here.
Just follow steps to Converting a “Traditional” WordPress Blog to a Subversion Checkout.

Congratulations, you got solid foundation to built on!

MemberWing 2.0 - the all new super improved and updated version of wordpress membership site plugin just been released. Fresh and warm off the hard working test press!

MemberWing is the only plugin in The World that support the following features at ZERO COST:

• Up to 4 Levels of membership for webmaster to choose from.
• SEO Optimized design, allowing search engines to index teasers of premium articles and drive traffic with more prospects toward your membership site right off the bat.
• Fully automated Paypal membership payment system integration. As soon as user paid - system will join user automatically. As soon as member cancelled subscription - MemberWing plugin will remove him automatically.
  Let MemberWing process your payments and do housekeeping while you’ll be working on your great premium contents.
• Simplicty of operation. I mean, just type inside your article this: {+++} and anything after that little marker would become “premium contents”, accessible only to premium members. Anything above that marker is a “teaser” visible and ranked by search engines and available for free visitors. Enough to get them excited to join your portal. Can’t get simpler than that.
• Support any and all themes.
• Support for old and new articles. Convert your good old stuff to “premium” money making contents if you wish.
• Speed and performance.
• ZERO COST.
• Did I mention that it’s a bit cheaper than any other offering on the market?

‘Nuff Said.

Download MemberWing plugin

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]]> http://www.memberwing.com/demo/premium-post-for-bronze-users/feed/ http://www.memberwing.com/membership-site-news/memberwing-20-with-paypal-integration-is-on-its-way/ http://www.memberwing.com/membership-site-news/memberwing-20-with-paypal-integration-is-on-its-way/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:45:59 +0000 admin http://174.132.90.9/~memberw/?p=26 Brief announcement - new release of MemberWing for Wordpress with fully automated payment processing based on Paypal is on it’s way.

Also I am working on putting together new site with much more detailed resources about wordpress MemberWing plugin, tutorials and demos.

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