by Cristián Lávaque » September 7th, 2011, 1:56 am
Hi John.
I'm watching the new video and will be commenting as I go:
I see you have no header, footer or sidebars in the Login Welcome page and that is not something s2Member does. s2Member only uses that page to send the person to it after a login and protects it at level 0, it doesn't do anything at all to the page's design. I looked in the editing page for it and saw below the editor, a panel named "Wea... (can't make out the first word) Options for this page" and it has ticks for "Hide entire heading" (or something like that), "hide entire footer" and "hide sidebars". That'd be why they aren't in the page. The Membership Options page has these same options checked.
About the redirection to the Membership Options at the beginning of the video, when you still had the Login Welcome as a redirection URL: The Membership Options Page Vars say you were trying to load page 445 and requires a level 0 access. These vars are not something you configure, they're appended at the end of the Membership Options Page's URL when someone gets sent there and you can tell where he came from and why he got bounced. They are explained in the documentation given in the panel I pointed you to.
445 the Video Tutorials page instead of the one you named Login Welcome, which has the ID 400. Now, 445 is the page you protected at level 2, but you also set it as your Login Welcome Page, which by default sets it at level 0 because anyone that logs in (including a level 0 member) should be able to see it. Why does it send you to the Membership Options if you just logged in? I'm guessing probably a conflict because of the mixed settings for it.
The reason to have the Login Welcome Page, which you mention not understanding what it's there for, is to have a sort of Home Page for the logged in member. A single page that he'll always see right after logging in. You can show him member updates and stuff like that there, you could show him upgrade buttons, you can give him an important members-only announcement, etc.
I hope that helps.