Questions about s2Member

[fruzzlies]

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can help me with my questions. I installed s2Member yesterday and am having some difficulty in a couple of areas that are probably easy fixes, but I'm not able to find the answer in the videos or in the forum.

My site is a paid membership site.

1. When I try to test my site by looking to see if the pages are together, it won't let me by the payment page, it keeps bringing me back even when logged in as the administrator. This is by going to a different browser. It will let me edit the pages, but when I try to view them, it skips me back to the payment page. I'm trying to test it to see what the buyer is going to get and I want to make sure it works. When I try to put in the login page url into the browser, it also skips me to the payment page.

2. If I wanted to allow a friend of mine to have free assess, how would I go about this without having them having to pay?

I'm extremely appreciative of the protection of this plugin of my site, but it's confusing.

Thanks in advance and appreciate any help, advice anyone can give me.

Regards,

Fruzzlies

[Cristián Lávaque]

1. I'm not sure I understand your question well.

2. You can create/edit his account and give him the s2Member access you want here:
WP Admin -> Users

[fruzzlies]

1. I want to see from the customers point of view that they are getting full access to the membership pages after paying and not being sent back to the payment page as my friend is, even though I've added her in and given her full access to the site. I don't want her to have admin privileges, but I don't want her to have to pay to be in the membership. I've also added in a test person, and tried to access the site in a different browser, but it won't let me in the site. It skips me back to the payment page. I need to be assured that my customers are going to get what they are paying for, but I'm having trouble verifying this.

2. I've tried that, but when you click on any of the membership links, it takes her to the payment page. It wants her to pay even though I've added her in. I've added her in through WP Admin as well as added a new user in the s2Member "Add a Member".

Please help me figure this out as I'm almost ready to get open my membership.

Thanks in advance and warmest regards.

[Cristián Lávaque]

OK, I thing I understand now.

So, what are you protecting? A page, a category, some posts?

And how did you protect them? With the dropdown selector in the edit page? What level did you set it to and what level are the accounts that aren't being allowed to access it?

Or did you do it with PHP conditionals in the body of the post? If so, could you post here the code you used?

[fruzzlies]

I feel really silly, I really don't understand. Let me try though.

I only have one level to the membership, it's level 1. It's protecting pages. I've made the following pages connected to the s2Member - membership sign up page, welcome page (those 2 are the required as in the training), then for the membership site itself, which are protected pages are Membership site, members training, resource library and members connections (this is a forum). The welcome page is also protected by s2member (which I guess is also just something the system does).

I've protected them by putting the page #'s that I want protected in the page protection drop down. All level 1's.

This system is very protected... I'm not complaining in any way, it's great to know that no one is getting in unless they are allowed.

I'm wondering if it's because of the PayPal thing? I think I remember the training saying that paypal recognizes who's paid and who hasn't. But as the owner/creator of the site, I would like to know how I can work around letting people I want to have full access (not edit access) to the site without having to have them pay. There are only a couple of people.

I hope I didn't confuse you. This is an amazingly protected system

Thanks for all your help, I'm truly grateful!!

[Cristián Lávaque]

Well, you seem to have done it all properly.

And those test and friend accounts you created, both were given Level 1 access, correct? Did you confirm that they were set to that level in their profiles?

Then, when logged in with one of those accounts, you should be allowed access to those pages you protected with Level 1.

And you say you still can't see them and are sent to the page to make them buy? Weird.

Other pages that you didn't protect are viewable, though, right?

Did you try raising the access of your test account to Level 2 to see if that works? It shouldn't be necessary, but I'd try that trying to figure out what's going on if it were me having that problem.

[fruzzlies]

I set them to level 1 but still have the problem.

The other pages that I didn't protect, are viewable, there aren't a problem at all there, it's just the protected pages. Do you think it might be related to PayPal? This is getting to be a bummer... I just want to make sure it's all set to put out there for the public.

I didn't try raising the access, I don't want the public getting access. Should I try this anyway? Will it mess up my PayPal settings?

[Cristián Lávaque]

I don't think it's a PayPal problem, but am not positive, this hasn't happened to me.

When I said raise the level to 2, I meant your test account: give it Level 2 access, it won't affect the pages or the other accounts. I just want to see if your test account, or your friend's, at Level 2 will be able to see the pages you protected to Level 1.

They should, obviously, but they should also with just the Level 1 requirement and it's not working for them. This is just a test to see if it changes the behaviour or they still get kicked out of the protected page.

[fruzzlies]

ah, that worked. My test member works now. Thank you so much!!!

Now what will happen when the paid subscribers sign up? Do they need to come in as a level 2 or leave it as a level one?

Thank you again!!!!

[Cristián Lávaque]

I'm glad it worked!

Well, you can just give Level 2 to them all, unless Level 1 is working properly for paying members. Still, a Level 1 member you create via the admin area, should have access to Level 1 content.

[fruzzlies]

How would I get everyone to the level 2 status without going through everything I just went through trying to figure out #1? There is only a #1 status nothing higher. I'm nervous to make any changes now but I want to ensure that the customer has access to what they pay for the minute they pay for it. I don't want them to feel like they are going to have problems.

I just can't thank you enough for getting me through this first hurdle.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Not a problem, I'm glad I was able to help a little.

About the members, you don't have any yet, right? Then you only need to worry about new ones, and the level for those will be set with the button you generate to make them register.

Now, that said, it should be enough for members to be at Level 1 to be able to access content for Level 1.

Are you sure you added those page IDs to the field for Level 1? Could you have entered them to Level 2 by mistake? Just checking. It'd be great if you could share a screenshot of the box where you configured that.

[fruzzlies]

No members yet, I'm still working on getting all the content I've promised into the membership area. I want my friend to look over it as someone who is a beginner and can give me honest feedback that the members would want to see coming in as a beginner themselves. I want to over deliver to my members and make this a great learning center for them. I also offered her free access/training as my helper. It's a good trade.

So I think, if I'm to let someone in free I need to give them a level 2 but anyone else (payers) can stay at the level one.

The screen shot is attached. Let me know what you think.

[Jason Caldwell]

Just to help clarify this a bit for other readers.

Membership Levels provide incremental access:

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• A Member with Level 4 access, will also be able to access Levels 0, 1, 2 & 3.
• A Member with Level 3 access, will also be able to access Levels 0, 1 & 2.
• A Member with Level 2 access, will also be able to access Levels 0 & 1.
• A Member with Level 1 access, will also be able to access Level 0.
• A Subscriber with Level 0 access, will ONLY be able to access Level 0.

* WordPress® Subscribers are at Membership Level 0. If you're allowing Open Registration, Subscribers will be at Level 0 ( a Free Subscriber ). WordPress® Administrators, Editors, Authors, and Contributors have Level 4 access, with respect to s2Member. All of their other Roles/Capabilities are left untouched.

Custom Capabilities do NOT provide incremental access.

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So if you'd like to extend s2Member beyond it's default methods of protection, Custom Capabilities are the way to go. The future development of s2Member will be focused more on the concept of Capabilities than Levels. I've done a video tutorial here: http://www.s2member.com/custom-capabilities-video/

[Jason Caldwell]

Another thing to keep in mind, is that s2Member's built-in Level-based protections may overlap. That is to say, your configuration might look something like this, but what actually happens is that all of these Pages require Level #3 access, because that is the highest Level required by your configuration. In this example, the first three fields are really just void ( i.e. they don't even matter ) because Level #3 wins in the battle for precedence. In this configuration, you are telling s2Member that all of these Pages require Level #3. You could remove the first three entries and you would still have the exact same result.

[fruzzlies]

Hi Again,

Everything seemed to be working fine but now it's not. When I sign in as my test person, assigned a level 2 since the only level available is level 1, I'm only able to get access to 3 pages. 4 of them are sending me to the payment page. I just can't figure this out. Please help... You can see from this screen shot that I've given higher access so I shouldn't be redirected to the payment page.