Separate Area For Members on Wordpress?

I would recommend a great plugin called s2member. You can do a search for it inside of wordpress and it will do all the things you mentioned above.

Hi Andrew,

Yes, s2member is great! But, it's also complex to configure. Though there is very complete dicumentation.
There are simpler WP plugins that you can use to create protected member only areas. Some like s2member allow charging through say PayPal or another payment gateway, whilst others allow creating different membership groups, but don't manage payment processing.

Some simple membership plugins to get you started are:
Just content protection, no payment:
WP Members: WordPress › WP-Members « WordPress Plugins
Member Access: WordPress › Member Access « WordPress Plugins

Content protection and membership payment:
Membership Lite: WordPress › Membership lite « WordPress Plugins
s2member: WordPress › s2Member ( Membership w/ PayPal® Integration ) ~ now Multisite compatible! « WordPress Plugins
User Role Subscriptions: WordPress › User Role Subscriptions « WordPress Plugins

I think Membership Lite would be any easyish option to get you going. It has good documentation and allows you to set up 2 membership levels and 2 subscription levels. It also has a payed for upgrade option for more user levels if you decide to expand your site.

You might also look at Are PayPal depending on what exactly you're planning to do:
WordPress › Are PayPal « WordPress Plugins

The plugins I have listed above tend to be stable and, supported and developed on an ongoing basis. They should also all be compatible with the latest version of WP.

Hope this helps!

Thank you very much for your help.

I do have Wishlist installed and was planning on using that but my main question is, how do I have the members only see the members posts/pages without seeing the Public posts and pages.

You se, I have hundreds of public posts so they will interfere with good content if mixed in with the premium content.

How do I keep the two places separate?

Of course, I can protect certain posts, but it wont separate them.

Andrew

Maybe, but I'm confident that WP can handle it. It does a lot of things. Just wanna know how!

I am using DAP now and one way is to 'drip' content to the members. I tried using a magazine template but it din't work out as I wanted. Instead I use a one page template and feed my members with the content on a regular basis.

Go through the wishlist tutorial videos. They show you how to use sequencial membership levels and such. You can make use of that. Just google wishlist training an you should find it.

I use "Register-Plus" it has membership levels, free and paid lvels, introductory period control, member areas and pages as well as non-member areas. It is fairly robust for what you may be looking for and yet not as expensive as some of the others mentioned above.

One thing nobody has suggested yet is to use a completely separate installation of WordPress. I've found that installing the second instance of a wordpress blog on most sites (especially Cpanel sites) is pretty trivial. Just install it on a subdirectory. You'll still want to protect it with one of the plugins like Tracey suggested. The big difference is that your paid subscribers go to the subdirectory, and if they forget they get your public blog. You can even put a Members link on your public blog if you want, with a sign-up page to gather a few more members over time. F

For example, people going to yourdomain.com for the public blog might go to yourdomain.com/members for the membership blog. On the main domain you could have a link (use a text widget) to direct people to the membership site, and provide a pay now button for new subscribers, plus the login form for your paid members. You win both ways, and the only thing you need to do to keep them straight is remember which you are posting to.