Free Site With Restricted Signup

[talus]

Am building a free site but want restricted signup limited only to members of a professional association. I would expect to input the member data myself. Membership would not be open to the public. How do I accomplish free membership with restricted signup?

[Jason Caldwell]

Excellent question.

s2Member is fully compatible with manual registrations, and even manual transactions through a virtual terminal @ PayPal ( which is supported by PayPal Pro ).

So here is how I would accomplish this, even without PayPal Pro:

1. s2Member -> General Options -> Open Registration = "off".
2. Protect all of your content with Level #1 Access Restrictions, under s2Member -> General Options.
3. When you're ready, you can create accounts manually, by going to:
WordPress Dashboard -> Users -> Add New
( assign them an s2Member Role #1 there )

You can even have an email sent to your Customer with instructions on how to login.

[moyerd2]

Free site with restricted signup is EXACTLY what I need. I used the settings above. But now what? My users login, go to protected category and are redirected to Membership Login Page.
I haven't found specific instructions about how to set up the login page for non PayPal users.

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for reporting back on this topic.

Free Registration occurs at Level #0. So if you send a visitor to the Registration Form, and they register without paying, s2Member puts them into the system at Level #0 by default.

However, s2Member gives you the ability to control what Level #0 ( aka: Free Subscribers ) have access to. So although we call them "Free Subscribers" you could re-brand Level #0 as VIP Access, and just protect some, or all, of your content from Level #0 access using s2Member's General Options panel.

If a logged-in Free Subscriber is being redirected to your Membership Options Page, it's most likely because your content is protected at Level #1. Meaning, you are requiring Level #1 access ( or higher ), but your visitors are signing up at Level #0 ( for free ). You can change this by protecting content at Level #0 instead.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

[moyerd2]

Perhaps I misread the question and answer in the above posts:
(question from talus..."Am building a free site but want restricted signup limited only to members of a professional association. I would expect to input the member data myself. Membership would not be open to the public. How do I accomplish free membership with restricted signup?")...

I too would like restricted FREE signup limited to only members of a professional association. I only want members of the assoc. to be able to register.
I read your 3 part answer to talus this way: no to open registration; protect all content with level 1, etc. But in your answer to me, you told me to protect my content at Level #0 - this seems to be conflicting information. Please help me figure out whether to use level #0 or level #1 to protect my content.

[moyerd2]

How do I just protect some, or all, of my content from Level #0 access using s2Member's General Options panel? The previous question is about a suggestion contained in your post above (created on Sept 1, 2010.)

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the follow up on this topic.

I would expect to input the member data myself. Membership would not be open to the public. How do I accomplish free membership with restricted signup?")...

Here are a couple of ways to deal with this:

Scenario #1 ( manual registration by the site owner ):

• Open Registration = off
• When you want to add a new Member, you add them through your Dashboard,
  by going to: Users -> Add New ( there you can choose which Level they'll be at )
• Protect content however you like, based on the Levels you're going to assign.

On this same note, you might want to have a look at this video tutorial. It's not "exactly" what you're trying to do, but it's similar, and the video may give you some new ideas.

Scenario #2 ( Open Registration, with manual review/approval )

• Open Registration = on
• Send Users to your Registration Form ( /wp-login.php?action=register )
  They go in ( by default ) at Level #0 ( so you can configure s2Member to allow only very limited access at Level #0 - or even no access at all. In other words, Level #0 only gives them an account, NOT access to any protected. In order to gain access, they must be reviewed by an administrator. )
• Once you've had a chance to review their account, you can click [Edit] by their name in the Dashboard, and change their Role to Level #1 ( or higher ) granting them access to content that you've protected at these higher Levels ( this completes the manual review process ).

So in this case, Level #0 is just used as a holding area. Where a Member has an account, but your configuration of s2Member requires a higher Level ( 1-4 ) in order to gain access to the content that you're offering. So the only way for them to reach this higher Level, is if you manually review the account and upgrade them, or if you provide them with a PayPal Button, allowing them to pay for an automatic upgrade through the s2Member software.

[moyerd2]

Eureka! I've done it - I now have s2members configured on my site. I've set the protection level to #1 and manually add the users who should have access to my protected pages!
I couldn't have done it without your help, Jason! My hat's off to you!!!