S2Member is a powerful membership plugin which is already integrated with PayPal Payment Gateways method. A membership website is a type of website where admins can have exclusive content. Members would have to pay to access specific content on the website. S2Member Framework helps you to protect page, posts, URL, categories, Tags, BuddyPress/bbPress, you name it.
S2Member is supported with WordPress shortcodes for almost every element that this plugin uses. You can set membership levels for payments and user roles. There are a plethora of options to tweak, let’s take a quick look at them. It also offers you a Getting Started guide which helps you to easily set the plugin for your site.
S2Member Framework In-Depth Review
S2Member Settings
S2Member membership plugin offers you too many options. You can select as per your preference including settings for Multi-Site as well. The plugin settings can directly be accessible from the WordPress Dashboard. To access the plugin’s settings, navigate to wp-admin > S2Member.
General Settings
- Plugin Deletion Safeguards: This option saves all your configuration and information of user roles and capabilities. You can choose to delete these settings while deleting the plugin or not.
- Security Encryption Key: The plugin recommends using a computer generated Security key provided with this plugin. It ensures you a tighter security for your site.
- Localhost WAMP/MAMP Developers: S2Member is also compatible with specifically localhost environments for developers and adjusts itself as per their requirements. It provides you a simple code to paste in your wp-config.php file to ensure you get a complete localhost environment.
- CSS/JS Lazy Loading: You can also use lazy load images on every page and post of your site with S2Member’s effects using simple shortcodes.
- S2Member Security Badge: This feature further ensures your site’s security. It gives you a Badge Status API through which it checks once per day whether your connection is successful or not.
- Email Configuration: You can also customize the outgoing email from your site.
- Open Registrations: You can also allow/disallow the registrations for free on your site.
- Membership Levels/Labels: The plugin also offers you options to assign a reputation label for each level of memberships.
- Login/Registration Design: As the name suggests, you can customize your login and registration pages such as fonts, colors, logo, etc.
- Registration/Profile Fields & Options: Here, you can create custom profile fields and allow them to integrate into BuddyPress profiles or not. You can also set password length and strength.
- Login Welcome Page: You can also set a custom login welcome page or a specific URL.
- Membership Options Page: You can assign a membership page (signup page) from here.
- Member Profile Modifications: This feature will allow your members to modify their profile ensuring the security of your site. When members try to access the default Profile Editing Panel, they will be redirected to your S2Member plugin’s Login Welcome page.
- URL Shortening Service Preferences: The plugin also offers you to use an API such as tinyurl and shorten your URLs for better traffic.
Restriction Options
- Post Access Restrictions: You can also restrict certain post types & custom post types for different membership levels.
- Page Access Restrictions: You can also restrict pages on your site for specific membership levels.
- Tag/Category Access Restrictions: The plugin also allows you to restrict tags and categories for different membership levels.
- URI Restrictions: S2Member also offers you to restrict any specific/custom URLs for different membership levels.
- Alternative View Protection: Even after the core protection of your site, some of the information such as Author Name, Blog excerpt, etc, can be viewed from alternative ways such as Searches, XML Feeds, Comment Feeds, etc. With this option, you can choose to protect your content through these alternative ways or not.
- Simple Shortcode Conditionals: The plugin also offers you to use its conditional shortcodes in your posts, pages, etc.
- Specific Page/Post Access Restrictions: With S2Member, you can sell the access to a particular page or post.
- Brute Force IP / Login Restrictions: Through this feature you can easily limit the login attempts on your site.
- Unique IP Restrictions: You can also restrict a user using a unique IP address for a certain number of times.
Download Options
- Basic Download Restrictions: You can restrict particular file types to be downloaded by different membership levels.
- Download Limit Exceeded Page: You can set a custom Download Limit Reached page from here.
- Advanced Download Restrictions: This feature allows the members to force download particular file type regardless of the Basic Download Restrictions. It assigns a key to every URL which skips other restrictions.
- Inline File Extensions: Here you can assign the file extensions to be an inline file extensions. In-line file extensions are those files which will be displayed immediately by your browser such as pdf, jpg, jpeg, etc.
- Remote Auth / Podcasting: This feature will allow your members to remotely download the files from your site.
- Amazon S3 / CDN Storage Option: Here, you can set your Amazon S3 storage CDN and access key.
- Amazon S3 / CloudFront CDN Storage Option: Here, you can set your Amazon S3 CloudFront private Key and Pair ID. There are also some other configuration options.
- JW Player v7 & RTMP Protocol Examples: This option provides you with video and audio shortcodes for online streaming. The plugin recommends you to use Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront for it.
- Advanced Mod – Rewrite Linkage: Here you can find information and some of the examples of rewrite rules for S2Member.
- Shortcode Attributes & API Functions: This section will provide you with all the information of S2Member’s shortcodes and its attributes with the API function calls and parameters.
- Preventing GZIP Conflicts On Server: This section will provide you with a code snippet to add in your .htaccess file to prevent possible conflicts between GZIP compression and Amazon servers.
- Custom Capability & Member Level Files: Here, you will find information about Custom Capabilities and sub-directories & protected files paths for different membership levels.
PayPal Options
- PayPal Account Details: Here you can set up your PayPal Account details and some information about PayPal Business Account and process for API Signature Request.
- PayPal IPN Integration: Here, you can manage your PayPal Instant Payment Notifications
- PayPal PDT/Auto-Return Integration: This section holds your Payment Data Transfer token and your Auto-Return URL with some information.
- Signup Confirmation Email: You will find some parameters to use in your customization. Also, you can customize the confirmation email from here.
- Specific Post/Page Confirmation Email: Similar to Signup Confirmation email, here you can customize the page or post’s confirmation messages.
- Automatic EOT Behaviour: Here you can manage your site’s behaviour and relation with the user who is ending his/her terms of service.
PayPal Buttons
- Buttons for Level #1/ Level #2/ Level #3/Level #4 Access: These four sections will help you to customize the buying fields specifically for different membership levels. It will generate the button code for you to use.
- Capability (Buy Now) Buttons: This is a little advanced section. But you can sell custom capabilities in the S2Member plugin, so those Buy Now button can be customizable through this section.
- Subscr. Cancellation Buttons: Subscription Cancellation button will opt you out from any subscription plan, so you do not have to customize it. You can find the button code here.
- Member Registration Access Links: You can generate a custom registration access link for your customers which is used after checkouts.
- Specific Page/Post (Buy Now) Buttons: As the name suggests, the Buy Now buttons which are displayed on specific Page or Post can be customized here.
- Specific Page/Post Access Links: Again, here you can generate a custom access link for specific pages or posts.
- Shortcode Attributes (Explained): Here, you will get fully detailed information about the shortcodes and its attributes.
API / Tracking
- Signup Tracking Codes: Here you can add some codes to display whenever a new user will signup or pay. Also, you can find some attributes to use in your codes.
- Modification Tracking Codes: Here, again, you can add/integrate some codes to display whenever an existing user modifies their subscription plans for signups for a new paid subscription plan.
- Capability Tracking Codes: The codes pasted in this section will be displayed whenever an existing user pays for a custom capability.
- Specific Post/Page Tracking Codes: The codes integrated through this section will be loaded whenever a customer successfully completes his/her transaction through a specific page or post.
- Integrating iDevAffiliate: Here, you can find information, codes and installation procedure for iDevAffiliate tracking software.
- Integrating ShareASale: Here you can find information, codes and installation procedure for ShareASale affiliate program management.
- Other Tracking Methods Available: Some information about other tracking methods.
API / List Servers
- MailChimp Integration: From here, you can manage your integrated MailChimp email marketing services such as MailChimp API key, IDs for Free Subscribers, etc.
- AWeber Integration: Just as MailChimp, AWeber is another very popular email marketing service, you can manage its integrated options from here.
- Registration/Double Opt-In Box?: This is the double checkbox confirmation for receiving emails, only available when two email marketing services are enabled.
- Automate Un-Subscribe/Opt-Outs?: You can manage the automatic opt-out members based on particular events and scenarios through this section.
- Other List Server Integration Methods: Some information about other list servers integration and their methods.
API / Notifications
- Signup Notifications: In this section, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a new user successfully completes his/her transaction through a Payment Gateway.
- Registration Notifications: From here, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a new user is successfully created.
- Payment Notifications: In this section, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a payment transaction (including Recurring Payments) takes place.
- Modification Notifications: Here, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever an existing user modifies his/her paid subscription plans or terms.
- Cancellation Notifications: In this section, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a Subscription plan gets cancelled by a customer through Payment Gateway, i.e. on-going payment gets interupted.
- EOT/Deletion Notifications: From here, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a customer ends their terms or subscription plans.
- Refund/Reversal Notifications: Here, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a subscription plan has been refunded.
- Specific Page / Post ~ Sale Notifications: In this section, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever sales take place in a specific page or post.
- Specific Page / Post ~ Refund/Reversal Notifications: In this section, you can specify URLs of your site to be notified whenever a refund takes place on a specific Page or Post.
API Scripting
- The Extremely Easy Way: Some information about S2Member Restrictions Option Panel.
- Simple/Shortcode Conditionals: Here, you can get detailed information and examples about conditional shortcodes provided by S2Member Framework.
- Advanced/PHP Conditionals: You can get detailed information and examples for conditional PHP codes which can be used in this plugin.
- Advanced/PHP Query Conditionals: Here, you will find the detailed information and example for WP_Query which can be useful for this plugin.
- Custom Capabilities (Packages): In this section, you can get more information about custom capabilities and some of its examples.
- Custom Capabilities & Member Level Files: Here, you can get the information for custom capabilities restrictions and their sub-directories and protected files paths for different membership levels.
- S2Member Content Dripping: This section will provide you the information and examples for [s2Drip] shortcode which is provided by the plugin.
- S2Member PHP/API Constants: As the name suggests, here, you will find information about the PHP constants and their use within the shortcodes with examples.
- S2Member JS/API Globals: Some information about JavaScript APIs.
- Membership Options Page / Variables: Here, you can get some information about Custom Membership Options Page and its variables with examples provided by S2Member plugin. You can edit them from the core as well.
- Hooks/Filters (For Developers): Some information for the hooks and filters to be used in this plugin.
S2Member Configuration & Profile Fields
S2Member members will store some information about the user which can be helpful in the future in case of any conflicts or improvement in user’s experience. You can access these user’s information in wp-admin > Users > All Users > select any user. The following information will be stored:
- Paid Subscription Gateway
- Paid Subscriber ID
- Custom Value
- Registration IP
- Custom Capabilities
- Automatic EOT Time
- Reset IP Restrictions
- Administrative Notes
Conclusion
S2Member Framework plugin is the perfect plugin if you want to create a membership site very easily. The plugin already has over 20,000+ Active Installations. Also, it is well documented and offers amazing support.
If you have any questions regarding the S2Member plugin, you can always ask in the comment section below. Thanks for Reading.
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