Membership sites: DAP/aMember... does the WP caching issue require 2 sites?

2 replies
Hi

Over the past few days I have spend a lot of time building the structure of a new WP site, doing tons of configurations, etc.

The objective is a membership site with a free front-end blog to which I am hoping to drive a lot of traffic. At some point visitors should sign up to become members and get access to the membership area (posts, videos hosted on S3).

All seemed fine, the only thing left to do being: deciding on either DAP or aMember, making the purchase and configuring it.

But, casually browsing through the DAP support forum, I stumbled on a MAJOR hurdle: DAP is not compatible with ANY WP caching plugin. Not sure if it is the same for aMember.

Now even though I am on a VPS, caching seems almost part of the default customization of any WP installs these days as it takes off significant pressure off the server. And Google placing paramount importance on page delivery speed...well I am not comfortable having no caching!

I feel this issue just shattered the whole structure layout I had planned and was working on!

So now I am left wondering:

Should I create 2 WP sites?

1) My front end: A blog, cached, highly optimized, SEO driven, etc. and having prospects sign up to my newsletter (email only), account creations deactivated

2) My membership site: bare bone and no frills, only focused on delivering the member content (Using OptimizePress+DAP or aMember). Members create their account here

If that is the way to go, then I would still prefer having them on the same VPS.
DAP/aMember would have to be installed on the membership site obviously.

So should I:

A) have frontend.com and create a subdomain called 'membership.frontend.com' ?
> install DAP/aMember on 'membership.frontend.com'
> deactivate any WP account creation on 'frontend.com'
> have a user registration link on 'frontend.com' simply point to the sign-up page on 'membership.frontend.com'
> so effectively users are creating their account on 'membership.frontend.com'

OR

B) have frontend.com and create a subfolder called 'frontend.com/membership/' and install DAP there?

Somehow I think solution A) would give me more flexibility and be safer because:
> if traffic increases I could move the membership site more easily to a separate server
> somehow I think having it in a subfolder could generate more issues than not

In both cases, these would then become two completely different sites with no integration whatsoever among themselves. Is that the way to go?
#amember #caching #dap #dap or amember #issue #membership #require #sites #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    I have used both DAP and Amember in the past and personally I much prefer DAP. They seem to listen more to their customers and most of things I wanted to do with Amember had to be custom coded yet everything I have wanted to do so far with DAP has worked right out of the box.

    The funny thing is I have been all through DAP's documentation over and over and never came across this cacheing thing. I have been running WP Total Cache plugin on my DAP site and haven't seem to have any issues at all. The case might be different if you are updating your content frequently but I am not and I haven't run into any issues as yet.

    I don't think it's a case of cacheing not working at all with DAP, I think they just say it doesn't work because a lot of it doesn't - much like when they tell you to switch off your phone on a plane. It's more a preventative thing than anything.

    But who knows...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5855599].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MsWanda
      Thanks WillR

      I wanted to post a link to the relevant page in the DAP support doc but I am still missing the required number of posts :/

      Are you running DAP on your main site or does it run on a separate instance?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5856799].message }}

Trending Topics