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Joomla Membership Site

by Chris W. Sutton
5 replies
Hi everyone! I am going to set up a training, membership site in a tightly focused, non-IM niche. I am trying to decide on which system to use to set it up and that is where I run into problems.

The site will have a ton of content (videos, articles, audio, etc) and I need it to deliver the content to the end-user without a lot of complexity. I don't really want to dripfeed the content and I want it available at all times.

Whatever I use will also need to be scalable because it will grow and grow and grow.

Here are things I have considered and the reason I hesitate...

Joomla is good and I have used it before. The problem is that they keep coming out with brand new versions. Version 1.5 will no longer be supported after April so they recommend version 1.7. Version 2.5 beta is out now but not recommended for live sites. My concern is that if I set up 1.7 and they go to 2.5, I'm not sure how smooth the conversion would be.

WordPress is great for blogging but it's not something that comes to mind right off the bat for a membership site. I KNOW there are free and premium plugins available but I don't know if it would be a good one for something that will be growing very large.

I know about Drupal and I have tinkered with it but I have never liked it that much.

I have looked at Easy Member Pro, RAP with a membership plugin, Membership Site Supreme, Membergate and lots of others but I haven't found one that I like.

Of what I have seen, I like Joomla the best but it would be great to have some reassurance that I would have a smooth transition if I had a very large site. Are there any opinions on migrating a large site to the new versions that come out?

If not, are there any other recommendations that people have tried and really love?

Thanks for your feedback!
#joomla #membership #site
  • Profile picture of the author Joseph G Spiteri
    Don't know if this is of any help to you have you had a
    look at wishlist membership. You look to be a lot more
    advance than i am in all this hope that's of help to you.

    All the best
    Joe
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris W. Sutton
      Thanks Joe, I appreciate it! Actually, I have looked at several plugins for WP including Wishlist. The problem is whether WP can do a good job of handling a very large membership site in the content delivery area.

      Thanks again and you have a great day!
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  • Profile picture of the author DianaHeuser
    Chris,

    Sal64 is very clued up on membership sites. Give him a shout. I am sure that he can give you the best advice.

    Di
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    • Profile picture of the author roblawrence
      You should seriously look at Membergate again: membership site software and content manager solution - MemberGate

      Version 8 just came out and they have tons of great new features. It's built from the start to be a membership site and automates a lot of the account management tasks like re-billing bounced cards (with number logic to fix expiration dates) and a member can update their own payment info, get billing history or even cancel their own account. These tasks alone have saved me many, many hours.

      None of the wordpress "plugins" including wishlist have this type of billing capabilities and you will spend a lot of time chasing customers for payment and having to pay a customer support person to update credit cards, etc.

      The other thing that Membergate has are lots and lots of reports and analytics (account activity, lifetime value, total spend, average spend, length of stay, etc. Very few others have this type of granular detail-level of reporting.

      The software is very complex and not as "pretty" to look at on the inside but it works and does things that the others can't do.
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  • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
    I know I'm late on here... I search every now and then for Joomla threads for those that have any questions.

    I think its a slam dunk for Joomla.. possibly Drupal, but you should probably like the access levels built into joomla 2.5, that's the way to go in my opinion. If you want to make it more social interaction you could go with Jomsocial integrated in it.
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