Individual page access, shipping plugin, web hooks and using caldera forms

#1

Hello :slight_smile:

Three questions if any kind folks can help please …

  1. I’m wanting to build a site where I can set member access to different sections of my site.

For example;

a restricted page where I display my portfolio so recruiters or people hiring me for freelance work can register or login using a set of IDs that I create for them. another restricted page where i can provide digital files or services for visitors to purchase.

I understand that S2Member can set membership levels where L0 is free, L1 can access L1 and L0 contents, L2 can access L2-L0 contents and so forth. Short of creating multiple sub-domains where I create 1 single level for portfolio views on one sub-domain and another sub-domain for e-commerce, what other method(s) can I deploy?

  1. Is there a shipping plugin friendly with S2Member? If it matters, I’m based in Australia so Auspost shipping tables plugin would be ideal.

  2. I rely heavily on a Wordpress form plugin called Caldera Form. I searched and there are workarounds with Gravity Forms for S2Member. Has anyone manage to find a plugin that bridge S2Member to Caldera Forms?

  3. Is there a noob friendly plugin that allows a bridge from S2Member to a CRM (with inbuilt autoresponder) that I use with webhook and API access?

Apologies for the multiple questions, just thought I try to compile rather than drips and draps.

Thanks in advance
Ben

#2

Welcome to the forum!

While I’m not 100% certain that I understand what you are looking for, I think you are somewhat over-complicating things.

First, there is no need at all to use sub-domains. You don’t even need to have membership levels work hierarchically if you don’t like that. While that is the default setup, it is easily changed using a role management plugin like Capability Manager Enhanced, or else you can use custom capabilities (ccaps) instead. So you just protect (or not) whatever posts, pages, categories, etc you like in whatever way you wish.

This means that you can run e-commerce happily alongside portfolios. Just set up each area as you want and then work out what is the best way to protect each one (or leave some things available for access by the public).

As for your enumerated questions, I would first make the general remark that s2Member is coded so that it will work with any other well-coded plugin. So (unlike with many other membership plugins) you often don’t need to think about dedicated add-ons. You can just pick whatever plugin you prefer and it will almost certainly work fine with s2Member.

  1. WooCommerce is the obvious answer. If you use the Role-O-Matic plugin (available on CodeCanyon), you can even use it to sell s2Member roles instead of using s2Member’s own forms.

  2. It depends what you are using your forms for. If you are adding metadata to users, for example, then I doubt you need to do anything at all, because s2Member roles are just regular subscribers with the capability to access s2Member levels added.

  3. We need more details of the CRM you are thinking of using.

#3

Hi Tim

Thank you for responding, much appreciated.

Sorry, my numbering was mumbo jumbo :blush:

Let me take a step back … baby steps this time.

I have done a simple flow chart for the entire site https://cl.ly/rYhA

We are just going to focus on one part for now …

Hire me for work basically allows me to send a cold email to prospective employers with a pre-registered login credentials. Preference is to have them sign in using the allocated credentials instead of hassling them to sign up. Once they are logged in, they can browse through my previous work, images, references etc and I can embed a meeting scheduler for them to get in contact.

I saw the video (on this page https://s2member.com/kb-article/video-custom-capabilities-for-wordpress/) where the video (timer 4:10) talks about inputting “a” and “b” under custom capabilities. My understanding as per the flow chart here https://cl.ly/rXZO.

This is what I am hoping to achieve https://cl.ly/rXQ0. Taking consideration from the first screenshot of the overview with the e-shop, what would be the best way to achieve this flow?

Thanks in advance!

#4

Ben, this is what I’d recommend:

  1. From your first flowchart, I would have those who become members when purchasing a product register at sMember level 1. I would do this through WooCommerce.

  2. I would then register each of your potential employers at s2Member level 2. This takes advantage of the hierarchical nature of roles (so that potential employers can see whatever purchaser-members can see, though you could remove this capability if you prefer) and also enables you to differentiate easily between them and purchaser-members.

  3. Whether you also give potential employers a ccap depends on whether you would want each one to see the same content. If so, don’t include a ccap. If yes, then use ccaps to differentiate between the different potential employers and protect content accordingly.

  4. I also recommend you install an email logging plugin, like Email Log (highly extensible) or f(x)Email Log (slightly more features for free, but not extensible).

Then the process for contacting a potential employer would simply be a matter of your creating a member at level 2 (and, perhaps, a ccap, depending on your answer to Q3) and emailing them with the appropriate details.

The reason why I suggest you install an email logging plugin is that you will need to see what emails get sent when.You don’t want WP firing off an email automatically when you register a new potential employer, unless it’s the right email. (You don’t want it to be the default WP email, and you don’t want it to be the same as the email to a product purchaser who has just become a member.)

#5

Hi Tim, thanks for replying.

A quick response on the points:

  1. I thought on the sales page of S2Member the developer discourage Woocommerce and mentioned it will not work with S2Member?

"Planning to use WooCommerce?
Note: s2Member is a turnkey solution that does not require and/or work with other e-commerce platforms. In fact, s2Member was built long before WooCommerce became an established platform and it predates WooCommerce by 2 years. Therefore, you shouldn’t use both WooCommerce and s2Member at the same time; i.e., WooCommerce is not compatible with s2Member, or vice-versa. "

  1. If potential employers are at L2, wouldnt they have access/ downloads to the stuff that L1 purchaser-members have? I’m confused on this point, am trying to get away from hierarchy access (which S2Member tutorials are showing).

  2. Thats the thing. I was thinking the workaround on your point 2 is to introduce them on L2 but use CCAPS to limit access only to the portfolio pages. Then again, I cannot differentiate potential employers on different industries that I worked on, and they might find the extra information irrelevant or worse … the info worked against me by suggesting I’m not specialised but experience are too spread out.

  3. True … can be confusing for product purchaser to receive the same email as potential employer. I read that Email Log can only log and view, does not control or allow admin to review emails before sending it off. Does email logging help in controling the emails being sent from WP?

Its becoming more apparently that S2Member is good but does not serve my purpose due to the hierarchy role/ level setup. I’m thinking either I find another membership plugin that would suit my needs more (alas I already purchased the S2Member PRO) or perhaps another workaround would be to setup the portfolio viewing or e-shop on a sub-domain.

If I put the portfolio viewing on a subdomain and only introduce L0, forcing users to register, maybe that can be a workaround. But another problem arises because some info on my portfolio does contain private info and L0 would mean anyone can register. Is S2Member capable of admin reviewing and approving new signups? Not ideal on the review control can deter potential employer from taking extra steps just to view portfolio … sigh …

Or maybe not use S2Member or any membership site at all, and just use the WP core password page protect for now …

Do you have any recommendations on another membership site that allows me to do what I want? Priority is the portfolio viewing, e-shop later …

#6

  1. That verbiage about s2Member and WooCommerce was written years ago. It’s well out of date. Many people use both plugins on the same site without problems.

  2. You seem to be hung up on the hierarchical structure of a default s2Member setup. But I have already told you that you don’t need to have it like that. Just install the (free) Capability Manager Enhanced plugin and use it to remove the ability to access level 1 stuff from level 2 users. That’s it – done!!

  3. If you use level 2 for potential employers, then using ccaps to differentiate between them makes sense. You could always duplicate content so as to make sure that each potential employer sees only what s/he should. That way, each potential employer would get his or her own unique ccap.

  4. Email logging just logs and views. The point of using it is mainly to enable you to test everything before you go live with the setup. You could, for example, turn off automatic emails, and then use a plugin like WP Email Users or Send Email from Admin to write a custom email for each person.

I think you are grossly over-complicating things. You can have sub-domains galore if you want, but there is absolutely no need. My advice would be to just build it. Until you do that, you are going to imagine problems that don’t exist, and overlook issues that turn out to be more pressing.

#7

Hi Tim

Thanks for the wise advise. You are right. I should start building the pages first. Will start tomorrow and see how it turns out on a staging site.

Nah absolutely not :smile: I purchased S2member without diving into the KBs and based on the merits of reading positive reviews on the plugin. When I started to play with it, the only tutorial/ documentation I can find on S2member site was the explanation on how to setup using the hierarchy method. Youtube dont really have much resources there as most of the videos are either made 2015’ish to the most recent which was 1 year ago and its a very short video.

I read about the capability manager enhanced plugin. I’m just unsure what it does other than being able to create new roles and manage capabilities such as those of an admin. I searched youtube for tutorials and only came up with 4 videos on them. I just installed the plugin on the staging site and when I select L2, do I checked the box “read private” on posts/ pages? Then again, I’m not sure what thats suppose to mean or function. I went over to the developer’s site to search for documentation but there’s none. Perhaps tomorrow I should click on each radio button and see what it does to test and understand what you mean by using the capability manager to remove/ differentiate L1 and L2 access.

Ok noted on the logging part.

Thanks for your patience.

#8

For the Capability Manager Enhanced plugin, call up s2Member level 2, and then uncheck the s2Member level 1 capability. Then save. That’s it.

You now have two levels that run in parallel instead of hierarchically.