WordPress

Wishlist Member WordPress Plugin Review

| srivello

Our RMC website has been reporting on Software Development for years. Recently, I completely updated the website – new design and new content. I have a few features left to ad, but most recently I added a free membership system which allows access to restricted content including tutorials with full source code and HD Video screencasts.

Editors Note: RMC is independent and is not an affiliate member or reseller to these plugins. The links are provided for your convenience.

Updated: I have installed Wishlist Member on a new site and created a robust tutorial complete with HD Screencast Videos. Check it out!

Why Add Membership To Your Site?

Typically sites add membership to restrict content. They may set up a membership wall between non-members and the content that only logged-in members can see. Membership (at least one level of membership) is often offered for free. Capturing the sign-up information of new members allows sites to send newsletters and target content more effectively based on the type of member. To monetize the site they may setup a pay wall allowing certain content only to those paying members. In a complex, but fairly standard implementation a site may treat non-members, free-members, and paying-members uniquely. This allows the site to attract newbies, build a relationship, and make money.

In my specific case, I want to target newsletters to my audience. I hope the newsletter will encourage one-time visitors who arrive to read an interesting link to become regularly visitors who check back to read new content regularly. I could just add a newsletter widget where users input their email and click ‘Sign Up For Newsletter’. However I thought tying a newsletter into membership would a) ‘bother’ my audience the same amount yet b) offer much more compelling reasons to sign-up (via membership wall).

Membership Plugins

As a WordPress-based website, I researched for compatible plugins to offer easy membership.

Leading Contenders (Single-Site / Multi-Site License)

There are free plugin options too including Member Access, Members, User Access Manager, & WP Member.

Editors Note: None of the free options above appeared to offer a compelling list of features. Especially considering that you can monetize your site more easily the relatively small cost of the pay plugins is well worth it.

Membership Plugins Features

Here are some common features you want in a Membership plugin. Wishlist member, which I ultimate chose has all of these, however RMC currently needs very few features. I still wanted a plugin that could grow with my site. I’ll add new features with time.

Features You Want (Did I need them?)

  • Flexible Membership Options (Yes) – Create Free, Trial, or Paid membership levels — or any combination of the three.
  • Shopping Cart Integration (No) – If you want to offer pay membership, tie-in with online pay systems (e.g. Paypal)
  • Protect Text (Yes) – Wrap text within a public posts in a [private][/private] tag. Non-members cannot see it.
  • Protect Posts (No) – Control access to entire post
  • Protect Pages (No) – Control access to entire page
  • Custom Error Pages (Yes) – Control what members see when they have the wrong access (or no access) for the protected content
  • Custom Sign-Up/Registration Pages (Yes) – Control and customize the experience for non-members to become members.

Wishlist Member

After evaluating the options available and my current (and future) needs for membership. I chose the Wishlist Member (WLM) plugin. It appeared to have a solid, updated website, good feature-set (only a partial list is above) and good customer support.

Installation

The installation is crazy-simple. You purchase through the website. Within 5 minutes you can download a zip and use the WP Plugins dashboard to ‘add new plugin’ and start the setup.

Editors Note: The first installation appeared to work but then WL then showed permanent, non-fatal PHP errors related to WLM at the top of the any admin page. After deleting the WLM the plugin, deactivating *all* plugins and reinstalling WLM again, it worked. No more errors. I then reactivated all my plugins and all was fine. Then I started setup

Dashboard

The WLM dashboard sites within the WP dashboard. It features 3-tiered navigation and has all the options you could want. The design is pretty, (fairly) well-thought out and easy to read.

Setup

There is a ‘Setup Wizard’ that walks you through protecting your site. One of the challenges with this, is that if you are new to membership concepts, you may not KNOW what you really want to protect. However there are helpful “?” buttons within the entire WLM dashboard experience that can answer questions regarding terminology and concepts.

Documentation & Support

There is a wealth of documentation. Its a bit challenging to see exactly where to start – the plugin does many things you may not need or care to read about. To help figure out exactly WHAT you can do with WLM I recommend starting with the showcase of WLM sites. The provided WLM video tutorials are helpful (if a bit outdated). Just about everything you want to do is covered there. Great job WLM! The WLM forums accept community questions and community answers. Often companies have official respondents to answer popular posts. In my short research for a few key questions, I found poignant posts which seemed to reflect relevant and common doubts from users without any answers.

Maintenance

Now that the site is setup and running, there is not maintenance needed. As I add new posts, I will decided if all or part of the post should be protected. Adding this protection is fast, easy, and dependable.

Negatives & Suggestions

During the setup process I created a list of suggestions for WLM.

  • In setup change “Turn hide/show protection on?” to “Hide Protected Content From Non-Members?”
  • After log-in I’d like to direct the user to the page they were reading BEFORE they had to log in. Should be possible. It’d be really great to use this in more places (after registration confirmation too).
  • In dashboard rename “Advanced” to “CSS” or “Styling”
  • Throughout the dashboard, there are already “?” buttons with tooltip text floating in a box. That is great. I recommend to add “more” buttons which link to relevant help pages on the WLM site, and video buttons with tutorial videos showing in lightbox (floating over admin). There are tons of great video content and having them integrated into the admin would save valuable time and encourage users to learn more.
  • And this link from the WL admin simply refreshed the page without any functionality “Take a Video Tour of Wishlist Member”
  • Unusually, anytime after the initial ‘Setup Wizard’ is complete. Maybe it would be useful? Well to my surprise it shows red “[INCOMPLETE]” for steps I know I completed. I think my original work was saved and is in proper use on the site, but this section is a bit broken upon quick opinion.

Editors Note: All of these suggestions have been sent to Wishlist Member via the customer support (Ticket #71865). At the time of this article, no response from customer support has been recieved, although none is really needed or expected.

Summary

While I took time to compare features from the various plugins (and WLM is favorable), I did not install and try other competitive plugins.

Overall WLM is a solid plugin. It promises great features and ease-of-use and it performs as advertised.

The forums and email support did not wow me. However I’m spoiled by really active, vocal communities in my non-Wordpress software development experience (Flash/Flex/HTML5), so perhaps my expectations are too high. I did find a few WLM forum-posters who are *really* helpful with patient, concise help. Kudos to good people.

Next Steps

ActionScript 3.0 WordPress Plugin

| srivello

Managing a blog about programming requires code snippets in the articles. I wanted a great plugin that would show ActionScript 3.0 (and other languages) with colored text, line numbering, and easy ‘copy text’ functionality.

The Syntax Highlighter plugin for WordPress does this well and is easy to add.

Example Code

{
	//--------------------------------------
	//  Imports
	//--------------------------------------

	//--------------------------------------
	//  Class
	//--------------------------------------
	public class Sample
	{

		[Bindable]
		protected var _sample : String;

		public function Sample ()
		{
			_sample = "Hello World";
		}

	}

}

Output Code

[actionscript3 language=”true”]
package classes
{
//————————————–
// Imports
//————————————–

//————————————–
// Class
//————————————–
public class Sample
{

[Bindable]
protected var _sample : String;

public function Sample ()
{
_sample = "Hello World";
}

}

}
[/actionscript3]

Wishlist Member WordPress Plugin Tutorial

| srivello

Now And There

One of my companies is Now And There. The website NowAndThere.com was launched ages ago, and is updated regularly with new blog articles. Currently users come via Google search or perhaps following a Twitter post and arrive to read an article or two. There is no login. Its just a simple blog. I would like to add membership to the site.

This RMC post is a fantastic, thorough tutorial on the before and after of a membership website. It includes text and images here in the post. Below the post there are 3 great HD Screencast Videos (See ‘Member Resources’ below) which repeat what we have here in the post plus much more!

Why Add Membership?

I would like to increase traffic on NowAndThere.com. The 2-prong goal is to get traffic and then keep traffic. Getting new traffic is outside the scope here, but I figure once people visit, I’d like them to stay for a while and even return another day. I think a newsletter (monthly, quarterly, etc…) is a great way to invite current readers back to the site. But, if users are going to express interest in a newsletter and fill out a form (with at least their email), why not keep them as ‘members’? With membership I can offer the newsletter as well as exclusive content. Plus by keeping some content for members only, I can encourage more casual readers to become members (and thus receive the newsletter. I’m rambling, but for me membership + newsletter is the best plan to meet my goals.

1. The Plan

The site currently (See ‘Figure 1’) features no membership. We will change the page layout to provide a membership widget (See ‘Figure 2’).  This membership will allow for non-members to log-in/sign-up and allow logged-in members to see their membership information and to log-out.


Figure 1.
Figure 2.

Membership allows to protect (or restrict) the content on the site for certain members. Its a fairly flexible content. A site could have an entire site that requires membership or just select content which require membership. A site could offer just one level of membership or have multiple levels (at various prices for example).

An analysis of how I would like the site to work is as follows (See ‘Figure 3’). I would like the site’s content to be unprotected by default, but to offer a quick, free membership sign-up to see some posts and in some specific cases to see some parts of some posts. In a broad sense its a 90% unprotected site, with 10% of the content that requires membership. My idea is to encourage sign-up WITHOUT turning away the casual readers. I can always change the 90/10 balance in the future as I see fit.


Figure 3.

The schemes shown (See ‘Figure 3’) will work as follows;

    • Scheme #0 – Unprotected content. No membership required. (See ‘Figure 5’ for an example)
    • Scheme #1 – An unprotected post which gives the gist of the story and then protects the rest  (See ‘Figure 6’ for an example)
    • Scheme #2 – A protected post. Users will see it listed on the front page, but cannot see any of the post without membership. (See ‘Figure 7’ for an example)
    • BONUS – This last scheme is a modified version of #1 where the entire post is unrestricted and only a list of links at the very bottom is protected. (See ‘Figure 8’ for an example)

Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
Figure 8.

2. The Process

The Membership Plugin

As mentioned before (See ‘Figure 3’) the NowAndThere.com website was created with the popular website creating tool WordPress. If you are new to WordPress, checkout my complete WordPress: Install & Introduction post which includes HD screencast video. To add membership to NowAndThere we will be using the Wishlist Member (WLM)Wordpress plugin.  If you want to know more about the plugin, read my Wishlist Member WordPress Plugin Review post or simply follow along with the tutorial post you are currently reading.

Before You Start

In addition to this post and the 3 HD screencast videos (See ‘Member Resources’ below) I recommend reading the features on the Wishlist Member website’s features section, the showcase of example websites, the support/documentation, and review the extensive Wishlist Member video series.

All of this will help you learn – what is possible, what you want to do, and how to do it.

Installation

First, do a complete backup of your website. I recommend that before any website development, especially significant development like this.

Second, you must purchase and download the plugin from the Wishlist Member website. Then access the admin of your existing WordPress site, visit the plugins page, and upload the new plugin. Activate the plugin. You will notice (thankfully) that after activation your site has not changed. This allows you to install the plugin safely without changing your user experience.

Setup

Now that the plugin is activated you will begin setting up the plugin. During the course of this process your website will be in limbo. Your user experience will change. For instance you may restrict access to a page but not yet add the widget allowing users to sign-in. So no one can reach that page. This is ok. Its just something to remember. You will want to plan well to minimize the effect on your users. Depending on your familiarity with WordPress and Wishlist Member and the complexity of your site and content protection scheme the entire process may take hours or days of development.

Here is the ordered approach I used with NowAndThere after activating the WLM plugin;

  1. Access the WLM dashboard within your WordPress admin
  2. Add licensing information you get via email from WLM
  3. Follow the ‘Setup Wizard’
  4. Add the Registration Widget to your Sidebar
  5. Create Membership Levels (I created just 1)
  6. Add/Edit Error pages. This is what users see during the sign-up process, sign-out process, and other situations
  7. Edit the WL Member » Settings » Protection Defaults
  8. Edit the WL Member » Settings » Protection Defaults » “Text to display for content protected with private tags”. This is what users see for Scheme #1.
  9. Edit the WL Member » Settings » Email Text. This is what users see during the sign-up process.

—

Expert Tip: Open two web browsers. With #1 – log-in to WordPress and the WordPress Admin. Open your website too (like a logged in user). With #2 – do not log-in to your website. Open the website (like a non-logged-in users). This way you can easily test the logged-in and not-logged-in experience during your development.

3. The Result

Since starting this post, obviously the NowAndthere website has been updated. It now has full membership integration. Nice!

I have not yet added the newsletter. I will gather some members for a while and then use a 3rd party email system, such as MailChimp.com to send my first newsletter to all my current members next month or next quarter.

Ready to see the results? Great. Remember you must sing-up to NowAndThere (click here) to see the logged-in experience and log-out (use the sidebar widget) to see the logged-out experience. Have fun!

Live Examples of each protection scheme;

Next Steps

  • Watch the 3 HD screencast videos (See ‘Member Resources’ below). This complete post is explained with commentary and examples.

Member Resources

[private_Free member]Enjoy this members-only content!

HD Screencast Videos

1. Before

[tubepress video=”39631686″ embeddedHeight = “350” embeddedWidth = “550” showInfo = “false”]

2. Planning & Installation

[tubepress video=”39809293″ embeddedHeight = “350” embeddedWidth = “550” showInfo = “false”]

3. The Results

[tubepress video=”39842809″ embeddedHeight = “350” embeddedWidth = “550” showInfo = “false”]

[tubepress video=”39857791″ embeddedHeight = “350” embeddedWidth = “550” showInfo = “false”]

[/private_Free member]

WordPress: Install & Introduction

| srivello

Creating a blog can be and start blogging. However if you want your blog to sit on your own domain (i.e. TravelingIsSuperFun.com), then the following setup is a great start.

These instructions help you to create a new website running WordPress. WordPress is a fantastic, free website-creation tool that is popular and powerful. Its ideal for blogs or simple page based websites. It can integrate handle Flash media and e-Commerce business, but that is far outside the scope of this article.

This article assumes you have no web presence whatsoever, except a personal email, which we will use only sparingly.

HD Video Screencast

[tubepress video=”35649750″ embeddedHeight = “350” embeddedWidth = “550” showInfo = “false”]

ONE TIME SETUP

Web Host Setup

First you will need space to store your files. You can think of this as a harddrive, but one that is not on your computer. It exists in a building far far away. This way you can access the blog from anywhere on any computer, and so can your audience who reads your blog.

There are myriad options for a web host. I chose one ages ago, and always use it; DreamHost.

  • Open your favorite web browser
  • Browse to https://www.dreamhost.com/
  • Sign-Up for your free Dreamhost Account.

Domain Registry

You can think of the domain as the front door to your blog. You can send anyone in the world your domain and they can access you. Its kind’ve like how an email address allows anyone send you an email – but the domain let’s anyone find your blog.

  • Sign-In to the web panel. This is the Dreamhost Admin
  • Add a New Domain. You may choose any name you like, as long as it doesn’t exist, but I recommend one long word without dashes without underscores ending in “.com” (i.e. “TravelingIsSuperFun.com”)
  • Open your favorite web browser
  • Waiting? Browse to your new domain (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com). Most likely it is not ready yet. It will take “1 to 3 days” before we can Install WordPress per below. There is no way to speed this up. Just check back and when your domain shows “something”. Then you are ready to continue. While you wait you can “Setup New Email”. This is the only step you can do while you wait.
    Setup New Email

Certainly you already have a personal email. This is the one you likely used when you signed up with DreamHost per above. However for many reasons having a domain-specific email is beneficial (e.g. sammy@TravelingIsSuperFun.com). It looks more professional, and it helps separate your blog emails from your personal emails. It is unlikely you will receive much emails, unless you choose to distribute this email or list it on your blog. I do both.

  • Sign-In to the web panel. This is the “DreamHost Admin”
  • Add New Email. There you will see an option to “Create New Email Address”. Leave all settings as default, except these. Customize these settings;
    • Email Address
    • Mailbox Name
    • Password
  • Choose “Create Address”
  • Now Access Your Email To Test It. Enter your username and password at the “Webmail for your Email Account” (e.g. http://webmail.TravelIsSuperFun.com/ )

Install WordPress

Are all steps to “Domain Registry” complete? All of them? Sure? Ok then continue here.

WordPress will be the scaffolding for your entire site. It will be the graphics and text the user sees as well as the administration panel that you access to add/edit/remove content to your blog. There are mountains of great tutorials, videos on youtube, and books on the subject.

  • Sign-In to the web panel. This is the “DreamHost Admin”/li>
  • Add WordPress. Click the WordPress icon. It is located at the horizontal center and vertical center of the page.
  • Choose “Simple Installation”.
  • There are 4 form fields and one dropdown. Leave the first field blank.
  • Set the dropdown to your new domain (e.g. TravelingIsSuperFun.com)
  • Set the “Name:” to anything you like (e.g. This is my Travel Blog). You can change this later.
  • Set the “Email:” to your new email (e.g. sammy@TravelingIsSuperFun.com).
  • Click “Install It For Me Now”.
  • Waiting? Browse to your new domain (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com). Most likely it is not ready yet. It will take “10 to 15 minutes” before you see a WordPress at your new website. It will display something like “Welcome To WordPress”. At the same moment it becomes available, and email will be sent to your new email. So you can wait for that and click the links inside the email to see your blog.

Google Analytics Setup: Optional

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. You can check back and see who visited your website, why, for how long, etc… for any day ever in the history of your website. Very nice. And its free. It is best setup on day 1, but you can add it at any time in the future.

If you are not interested in analytics, skip this section and skip any instructions which mention “analytics” in other sections below.

  • Sign-Up for Google Analytics. You can use your existing free Google account if you have one.
  • “Add New Domain”. If you can’t find out how, search on http://www.google.com for “Adding a domain to Google Analytics” and follow the instructions. Complete analytics setup here is outside the scope of this article.

Google AdSense Setup: Optional

AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue. Its fast and easy to setup and totally free.

If you are not interested in AdSense, skip this section and skip any instructions which mention “AdSense” in other sections below.

  • Sign-Up for Google AdSense. You can use your existing free Google account if you have one.
  • “Add New Ad”. If you cannot find this. Follow this help section.

WordPress Setup: Part 1

  • Following the “WordPress Install” section above you will receive an email outlining how to login to your website. You will access the admin with a web browser through a subdirectory of your domain (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com/wp-admin/). This is your personal blog’s “WordPress Admin”. You will spend 99% of your time on this project inside this admin.
  • The first page of the admin is the “Dashboard”. It shows a navigation bar with tons of buttons on the left.
  • Click the arrow next to “Users” to expand the menu. Click on “Users” (yes, same word used twice)
  • Click on “Admin”. Change the password. Memorize it.
  • On the Users Menu, click “Add User”. Create a new account with your preferred username and password (you can use the same password as you used for admin if you like). Be sure to set the Role to Administrator. This way you can add/edit/delete (do everything) on the blog.
  • In the upper right, choose log out.
  • Log In again with your new username and password. Use this new username and password 100% of the time. Leave the original “admin” user account as a backup (i.e. You really never use it, but DO remember the password in case you need it.)
  • Browse to your blog. Just to see how it looks. (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com/).
  • Then continue with ‘Part 2’.

WordPress Setup: Part 2

  • You will access the admin with a web browser through a subdirectory of your domain (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com/wp-admin/).
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Plugins’ and choose ‘Add New’. For each of the following; search, install, activate.
    • Advertising Manager – This you will use for AdSense, per above
    • Akismet
    • All in One SEO Pack
    • Google Analyticator – This you will use for Google Analytics, per above.
    • Duplicate Post
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Appearance’ and choose ‘Themes’. Browse any, preview, any, and activate one. For now this will be your theme, so pick one you want for at least a few weeks. Any changes to ‘widgets’ will be lost when you change themes, so pick one you like.
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Pages’ and choose ‘Add New’. You will add 4. For each; Enter a the title/description here.
    • Home / This is the home page.
    • About / This is the about page.
    • Services / This is the services page.
    • Contact Us / This is the contact page.
  • Browse to your blog. Just to see how it looks. (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com/).
  • Then continue with ‘Part 3’.

WordPress Setup: Part 3

  • You will access the admin with a web browser through a subdirectory of your domain (e.g. http://TravelingIsSuperFun.com/wp-admin/).
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Posts’ and choose ‘Categories’. Add 2 new ones. ‘Fun’ and ‘Work’. You can delete these later.
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Posts’ and choose ‘Add New’. Add a few posts. There is TONS you can do here. But just give a title, input a sample paragraph, choose a category (of ‘Fun’ or ‘Work’) and click ‘Update. Checkout the site again to see.
  • On Left-bar menu, expand ‘Appearance’ and choose ‘Widgets’.  Each widget is a block of real estate on your blog. It can contain many things. A list of links, some text, an image, a calendar, a search text input, and much more.  Drag a box from the center area to the right. Checkout the site to see the progress. Experiment!

That’s it. You did it. We’ve used the most commonly used 20% of WordPress. There is much more to learn, but you already have all the basics now. You can send the link to your friends and share it!

ONGOING MAINTENANCE

DREAMHOST MAINTENANCE

-Only visit dreamhost to; pay your bill each year, add new email accounts. I.e. basically you never visit here.

WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE

-Login to the admin to add/edit/expand your website. You will login here frequently until your site is “done”.

That’s it!