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Best Wordpress Plugins/Themes for subscription community site?

by Julia B
13 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I'm building a members site on Wordpress. I'd really like it to have excellent community functions and be easy to manage from my end.

I'm not a developer, but have experience of building a couple of WP and I'm hoping this isn't beyond my skills! I had a go at building it last year using Membership and BBpress, but those two plugins didn't seem to work well together and I ended up getting frustrated and abandoned it, so I'm hoping to find a plugin which will facilitate both payment and community functions.



Members will pay a monthly subscription to access both the community and other site content (videos, articles, etc). Ideally with tiered membership options.

Tips and suggestions much appreciated. :-)
#community #plugins or themes #site #subscription #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author wikiklix
    I use S2 Member. Its quite easy to use and there is plenty of support to get things started. There are a lot of features but to get the basic membership site set up and integrated to paypal is fairly straightforward. I think you should explore this option I don't think it would be beyond your skill level.
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    • Profile picture of the author Julia B
      Thanks wikiklix, looking at S2 now. Do you use the free or pro version? And do you have community element to your site?

      One thing that got in the way when I tried to build the site using two separate plugins for the community and membership functions was that registration was required for each. I'd really like people to only need to fill their details in and create passwords once.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
    aMember Pro handles all of the login/password functions, and seamlessly allows access to subscribed areas for your entire community
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  • Profile picture of the author wikiklix
    Yes i was using the the free S2 member plugin. The social element of the site was a forum and I used Simpleress plugin. But your right you do have to register to be apart of the site and then sign up separately to the forum part of the site. I am not 100% certain about this but you might be able to turn of the registration for the forum. If a forum would be suitable for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Julia B
    Ha! Just Googled Simple: Press and now realise why your post contained a Wikiklix!

    I'm hoping to move a lot of people over from my Facebook groups onto my members forum, so I guess their expectations of community functionality and useability will be pretty high. How does it compare to something like FB?

    I don't want to get into building a whole social network, but it would be good to offer members some familiar features.

    Thanks again :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Julia B
    I've been researching this today and it looks like BBPress is a favourite forum plugin of a lot of people - especially if, like me, they don't have a lot of tech experience. But when I tried BBPress last year I remember having some problems with it - such as images would only appear as attachments, rather than embedded in posts, which is an important feature for my community - they love sharing and commenting on each other's photos.

    Also the issue I mentioned above, that people would need to register twice, once with the member plugin and then again with the forum plugin.

    I'm surprised there isn't a WP plugin around that features both subscription fee membership and a decent forum... Or is there? :-)
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    • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
      Originally Posted by Julia B View Post

      I'm surprised there isn't a WP plugin around that features both subscription fee membership and a decent forum... Or is there? :-)
      Again, aMember Pro does this. It handles the membership/payment part elegantly, and bridges seamlessly to most major forums and many other popular programs.
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    • Profile picture of the author yorkiedale
      Hi Julia,

      I'm looking for exactly the same functionality !

      how are you getting on?
      Mark
      Originally Posted by Julia B View Post


      I'm surprised there isn't a WP plugin around that features both subscription fee membership and a decent forum... Or is there? :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Julia B
    Thanks Jack. What I meant was that it would be good to have a plugin which handled both the membership and forum elements - so both could be installed with one single plugin. But good to know that amember bridges with forum plugins well.
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  • Profile picture of the author knishida
    Digital Access Pass (DAP) is another great WP plugin that handles membership subscriptions as well as affiliates, emails, etc. It also integrates with other WP forum plugins like bbPress and SimplePress, etc.

    Feel free to PM me if you have more questions!

    Kim
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  • Profile picture of the author Julia B
    I've been looking at Buddypress. Looks like it could be great for the community element - not sure how well it would integrate with a subscription membership plugin or if it hasn't that kind of functionality built in. Anyone know?
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  • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
    Have you looked at phpfox? It is more of a FB clone, but it may be the better option for what you are trying to accomplish.
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  • Profile picture of the author knishida
    Buddypress is supposed to integrate with S2, aMember and DAP but I know several biz owners that have had trouble with getting them to play nicely together.

    Kim
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