WP Wishlist Member for Membership Websites

In an earlier article, I wrote about my experiences with using six different Membership Site Software Solutions.

Ultimately, I used WP Wishlist Member which is a premium Wordpress Plugin for Managing Membership Websites.

The first thing I love about them is the extensive set of videos they post on their website.  You do not have to wonder if it is going to work for you or not.  They have many videos that show you exactly what WP Wishlist Member does.

Next, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.  When I bought the premium membership management plugin, I fully intended to ask for my money back if it did not work.  Instead, I found the Membership Website Solution I’d been looking for over a six month period.

WP Wishlist Member was easier for me to use for several reasons.

1. I was already used to Wordpress and it was easy for me to set up and customize.
2. Wordpress is simpler than Moodle, Drupal, DotNetNuke and Joomla.  It is also more publishing oriented than Ning.  And yet it was far less expensive than things like aMember or other premium membership site solutions.

Don’t take my word for it.  Go watch the videos and then buy it and try it – and ask for your money back if it is not the best membership website plugin you have ever tried.

Wishlist Member Setup for Wordpress

We get a lot of visitors to this site that need help setting up the Wordpress Wishlist Member Plugin.

First, they really do have great videos on their site that make it easy for anyone to add the Wishlist Plugin to Wordpress.  It should not be a technology issue.  It does take time to configure and get working just the way you want, but that has more to do with your shopping cart and how you want your membership site to flow.

Wishlist Member Setup for Wordpress

I offer our Membership Site Setup service not because it is my primary money steam, but because I have gotten better and better at doing this and I can save you time and hassle and put those membership site skills to use.

If you are thinking that there are people out there that will set Wordpress and Wishlist Member up cheaper for you, you are right.  Have fun hunting them down and working with them, then firing them and finding another.

Personally, I would rather work with someone that feels like they better do a great job because they value you as a client.  But that is just me.

Remember, you can do Wishlist Member Setup for Wordpress yourself.  It just depends on how much you value your time and if you want to work with a professional with experience working with Wishlist Member and Wordpress.

Membership Website Script vs Software vs …

What are you looking for?

• Are you looking for a Membership Website Script?
• Are you looking for Membership Website Software?
• Are you looking for Membership Website Plugin?
• Are you trying to find Membership Website SAAS?
• What about a Membership Website Widget?

All these different terms get used in different ways by people, making it hard to know what you are looking for.  Here is a quick guide to Membership Website Scripts and other terminology – just so you know what you are looking for.

Membership Website Script

The word script usually refers to a third party tool where you place a few lines of script (code) in the footer of your membership website.  Typically it is independent of whichever Membership Website Software System you have chosen.

Membership Website Software

Membership Website Software is usually a full content management system that may be specifically designed for membership websites or it may simply have the features to make it a good option for membership websites.  Examples are Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and Moodle.

Membership Website Plugin

A plugin is much like a script, but it is designed for one particular platform.  So a Wordpress membership website plugin will only work in Wordpress.  The good thing about a plugin over a script is that it is designed to be easy to install and configure within your membership website software.

Membership Website SAAS

SAAS stands for Software as a Service.  This is a more expensive option because someone is doing the work, development, support and hosting of your membership site for you.  However, a good Membership Website SAAS will free you up to create great information and market the membership website.

Membership Website Widget

Membership Website Widgets are pieces of code nearly the same as a plug in.  Widgets have special properties that make them easier to set up and move around in your membership website software.  Not all membership site software supports widgets, but those that do make it much easier for non-tech people to customize the tools and interfaces.

Wishlist Member Wordpress Plugin

I loved Wordpress long before I started publishing a membership site with it.  In fact, even though I was a wordpress expert, I was experimenting with Moodle, Drupal and Joomla trying to figure out what was best for membership site software.

Then I discovered Wishlist Member – a Wordpress Plugin.

This solved so many problems for me.

Publishing and membership management became much easier.

Using the option to have content public or protected, I was able to leave some of our articles public and have others only available to the members registered via Wishlist Member.  This resulted in great search engine results and potential members are able to see some of the content before they join.

Now Wishlist Member has a new version out that even integrates with membership site reoccurring payments on paypal.  While I use 1ShoppingCart because I value the affiliate program, the option to integrate with paypal is very powerful because now you can set up a full membership site for next to nothing.

I do suggest you buy the multi-site license for Wishlist Member.  For a little more you can set up as many membership sites as you want.  I even use it to set up private, free training areas that I use as bonuses for other things I sell.  The fact that launching a whole new membership site costs me no additional costs (maybe the $10 a year domain name) and can be done in a couple of hours is incredible.

Hosting Video on Amazon S3

Video hosting on Amazon S# is both fantastic and a headache for non-technical busy people.  It is a great service but you have to understand what the service is.  There is NO way to upload your video to Amazon S3 from any interface they provide.  Amazon is simply scalable storage and bandwidth for steaming them out.

So you either need someone that understands how to work with Amazon S3 or you need to take some time to figure out how to use the tools.

Info about how to  embed video hosted on the Amazon S3 Web Service.

First, why Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 offers storage of files at a very low cost and provides very scalable and reliable storage and backup at unbeatable prices.  Its the best 50 cents I spend each month.

How to Embed a Video stored on Amazon S3

Lots of websites are offering courses and membership areas to help you embed video into your blog or membership website which are stored on Amazon S3.  I did not want to pay and I am fairly technical and  I knew I could figure it out.   But I was pulling my hair out because I kept almost getting it to work, but not quit.

After a lot of testing and effort  I downloaded JW FLV Media Player, posted the files in the root directory of my website and used the site setup wizard to get the code just right.

Finally, I found that this works with FLV files which is one video format.  So now I am making all my videos in the FLV format.

The great thing is that with this code and wizard I can now embed video into my private membership sites that are hosted on Amazon S3.

Eventually I hit another problem.  The embed code did not work well in Wordpress.   I found that Wordpress has disabled the embed tag because of security issues.  Luckily, I found the Wordoress Plugin pb-embedFlash – The documentation was not great because it lacked the basic examples in a clear way.  However, I experimented with it a bit and found I could simply type [flash url] and it would replace the tag with the flash player and play the FLV file.  Like most things in Wordpress, once you get used to it, it works very well.

If you are looking for the best video hosting solution that will allow you to embed video into your blogs and websites, I assure you the above solution using Amazon S3 and the Free Video Player are great options.  Remember that if you are using the video player to make money, you need to buy a license.

Hosting Video on Amazon S3 is the professional option – just be ready to put some time into figuring out the details.

WP Wishlist Upgrade

Below is an email I got from the Wishlist Member Team. (As of January 20th, 2009)

I highly recommend their plugin for membership sites.  It is much more robust than those free membership site software options that are out there.  I have also used their support (excellent) and they are continuing to improve the product.  Purchase here

————————-

Over the last two months the WishList Member
team has been working extremely hard on
adding some MAJOR features.

These new features will not only make running
your membership site easier but they will
also save you a lot of time.

We’ll go into more detail with some upcoming
videos but here’s a sneak peak of what’s
coming on Thursday (Jan.22)…

———————————————
1)  Full PayPal and Clickbank Integration
———————————————

With the Full Integration, you can now have
two-way communication between WL Member and
these payment processors.

So if one of your members were to cancel
their subscription or their payment doesn’t
go through, they will be automatically
blocked from accessing your site

———————————————
2)  Email Broadcasting
———————————————

If you’ve ever wanted to email your members
right from within WordPress, now you can!

The Email Broadcasting feature now gives you
the ability to send an email boradcast
message straight to your members.

The best part is, your messages don’t have to
be generic because you can specify which
membership levels you want to send them to.

———————————————
3)  Autoresponder Intrgation
———————————————

We know many of our customers use various 3rd
party autoresponders (we do too).

So what we wanted to provide was an easy way
to send the registration info directly to
your autoresponder once someone registers for
your site.

That way you can design a follow up sequence
to keep them excited about your site.

Now that’s possible as major services like
Aweber and AutoResponse Plus have just been
added.  Plus we are working to add others as
we speak!

———————————————
4)  Email and IP Blocking
———————————————

If you have troublesome customers well now
you can keep them away from your site!

We’ve beefed up the security of WL Member by
adding email and ip blocking which means you
can keep those pests away for good

———————————————
5)  IP Login Security
———————————————

Along the same lines, we’ve also increased
the member security by giving you the option
to limit the number of logins per ip address.

That means people won’t be able to share
their login and password info to your site
with all their friends.

And if they do reach the limit, they will be
automatically blocked and you’ll be notified.
How you handle them is up to you

—–

That’s just a quick look at some of the
upcoming features but there are also a lot of
other modifications that we’ll share later
this week.

The good news is, you’ll get the upgrade to
WL Member v2.0 absolutely free (If you already have a purchased copy)

——————————-

Again, we use this product and highly recommend it.  The new upgrade makes it even better.

Buy Wishlist Member if you want to do a membership website.

Membership Site Marketing

Membership Site Marketing Tip #2

If you are using Wordpress and the Wishlist Membership Plugin, you can do a very clever thing with your membership website.

When you are in the Wordpress WYSIWYG Editor, you can choose to add the more market (It is a button that looks like two pages that are broken.)

If your page is protected for members only, the part before the more marketer will show up and then when someone chooses to continue reading they will get sent to the join page instead of get to finish the article.

Now with some creative writing you can take a normal article and make it into an extrordinary membership site marketing effort.

For example, if you were running a membership site for Halo (a video game) and you were telling people cheats for the game, you could put the more tag just before a very juicy piece of information.

The same goes for any topic.  Consider if I have an article about 10 tips to build your membership site and in the intro I said, “…and number 4 will save you thousands of dollars alone…”  Then I put the more tag right after number 3.

In that situation, people are already skipping one, two and three and looking for #4 – and they have to join for $27 to find out how to save thousands.  Seems like a good deal.

Good luck marketing your membership site.

Copyrighting your Membership Site

If you have a Wordpress membership site you will want to have an up to date copyright notification at the bottom. If you are like us and have many different wordpress sites and membership sites, you will not want to go through and copyright each one on January 1st each year.  Can you say hangover?  Who wants to look at PHP code then?

So you need to use a script to dynamically create the date in php so that your copyright notice stays up to date.

Luckily, we have that free copyright membership script for you.

Just copy this code:

&copy; YOUR NAME <?=date(”Y”);?>

The &copy; is the part that adds the copyright symbol.  The <?=date(”Y”);?> is the php tag that will print the current year.

Change YOUR NAME to your real name, and if you started the membership website before the current year you can update this free copyright membershipscript like this:

&copy; YOUR NAME 2001 – <?=date(”Y”);?>

The 2001 would be the year that you started the membership site.

Remember, having an updated copyright notice on your membership site not only helps you protect your valuable information, it also sends the signal to your membership site members and potential members that your membership site is up to date and valuable.