I tackled building a Membership feature into a client's website and had to research what the options were and here is what I found.

1. Membership Site Plug-
ins
By Adam and Mod Shed
Adamfshed@gmail.com

2. Why I chose this topic
I chose this to figure out after a client asked me about possibly
building a membership into his page to help him acquire email
addresses for his MailChimp mailing list.
Www.agorafundinggroup.com

3. The problem or
challenge
The first question you have
to ask yourself for a client
is exactly what the problem
is you're trying to solve
with your membership site
because there are 40 +
plugins all with different
strengths and weaknesses
depending on what you
want.

4. Making Goals as
an older adult
Just as an interesting side note,
older adults may not innovate as
much as younger techies but within
a niche that we are well versed we
may able to see a problem that
could be addressed with technology
and historically this does happen
more often with older adults.
www.techupgrade.info

5. Mocking Up
your Goal
Making a rough sketch
Take a large piece of paper and
mock up your idea because it’s
easier on paper when you are
learning the tools still as we all will
be as things change constantly.
Use other websites for ideas and be
critical
See Podcast: Matt Report episode
on Web Design Essentials and
Designing For A Platform

6. What Defines a Membership Plugin
1. Main Things -Protected content, Add Membership Levels, Can charge to view
content (All Plugins do this)
2. Other things it can do: Multiple membership levels, Limited trials, billing
management, wiki posting, category protection, content protection, Excerpt
display/teasers, Flexible subscription length, Autoresponder integration,
coupons and discount codes, Customizing emails, Billing management, manual
account creation, user registration fields.

7. The hypothesis (or
prediction)
What do you think
will happen?

8. Example: Apple and
Samsung have been
sharing equipment thinking
that it’s better to help each
other in the long run than
cut-throat competition.

9. The
Questions
I ask
Myself
1. How crowded is the market?
2. What is my unfair advantage?
3. How long will it take for someone to copy this
and fill the space?
4. How hard am I willing to work
a. Which plugins have step by step videos!
I’m slightly dyslexic, a visual learner, I
don’t care if it’s easier if there is no one to
walk me through it.
5. What are my motives: If I build a page to solve
a problem of learning for myself maybe I don’t
need to make money at all and this negates
Chris Lema’s Thinking Process as far as my
need to look at his ratings

10. The answer is very
dependant on exactly what
you want and your resources
available, time, energy and
money

11. Research
I asked the other WordPress facilitator John what he likes for
membership plugins and he directed me to Chris Lema who
has made himself into a niche expert on the topic by taking a
summer and dissecting all of the plugins into their strengths
and weaknesses see his blog entry here.
www.techupgrade.info

12. Being older doesn’t
disqualify you from
innovation statistically when
you are a master in your
career and see a problem
needing solved

13. Chris
Lema’s 6
Questions
1. What kind of payment gateway do you
want?
2. Do you need concurrent memberships
3. Will you be dripping content
4. Do you need support for prorating
charges
5. Will you be needing an e-commerce
solution-
a. IE do you want to sell an ebook or
something also?
6. Will you need one click upsell and
downsell offers?

14. Chris
Lema’s 8
factors to
choosing
the right
plugin.
1. Ease and predictability of use (can a non-
coder set it up?)
2. Multiple Concurrent Accounts
3. Payment Gateway Support
4. Dripped Content
5. eCommerce Support
6. Upgrades/downgrades
7. Pro-rating and Pausing
8. Other features that are nice to have
a. Google indexing post.
b. Membership directories
c. Pre-renewal emails
d. One-touch upgrades via links
e.. Upgrade offers at the initial purchase

15. Chris Lema’s Review
http://chrislema.com/best-wordpress-membership-plugin-2015/
Top 5, based on how many features you need, are listed here:
1. Memberpress
2. WooCommerce
3. Itheme exchange
4. Cart 66 cloud
5. Memberium

16. Why
MemberPress is
the top plugin
If you can afford it here is why
you will have the best
experience with MemberPress
10min
20
5
15
20min
29
4
25
30min
39
4
35
40min
27
5
22
Item 1
Item 2

17. MemberPress
Features that give it the highest
score
Easy installation and configuration
1 year product support and updates
Power to control what content is
seen based on what they purchased
No CSS or HTML required but you
can by creating a page template in
your theme
Works with any theme

18. Configuring
MemberPress
1. Set up a payment option
1. Go to Options and
payments and set up a
payment
www.techupgrade.info

19. Configuring
MemberPress
2. Create a product
Click products under the
memberpress tab. Name your
product, ie monthly membership
and set up the type you want.
-Shortcodes you can copy and paste
into your checkout area

20. Configuring
MemberPress
3. Set up your rules
Go to rules, click add new and
select which stuff you want to
protect.
You can tell it to drip feed and how
You can tell it what they see with
protected content ie. a teaser

21. Configuring
MemberPress
4. Coupons
If you want to set up a coupon, say
with an affiliate program you do that
here.

22. Configuring
MemberPress
5. Reminders
Here you will set up reminder emails
for situations in which someone may
be about to be charged again for
their subscription etc.

23. Other Options
We Played With
Paid Membership Pro and WP
Membership.
We found them to be viable options
with decent support when your
budget prohibits buying a premium
pluggin.

24. Aha!
My discoveries
What did you learn after testing?
If you can afford MemberPress I’d
definitely use it
Look for YouTube Videos for a
plugin
Make sure your goal is realistic and
worth it before wasting time and
money

25. This is the most
important takeaway
that everyone has to
remember.

26. Conclusion
Again WordPress is making web design doable for the masses
so we don’t have to learn as much code as you used to. Look
for online reviews, youtube videos, podcasts or other places
where others have done the work of figuring out the best
options before deciding on your plugin.

27. What will I do next?
What will you do with your findings
next? How will you further your
research/findings?
www.techupgrade.info

28. Credits/Resourses:
-John Peterson for all his free advice and help as well as sponsoring the
official Meetup of Houston www.develare.com
-Yvonne Raffini for putting me on her board of directors and constantly
including me in the ongoing conversation of her web presence and
direction of her non-profit including using my friend John Peterson
mentioned above to help me recipricate his generous phone support
www.communityintegrated-e.com
-Chris Lema for doing all the hard work of boiling out the best parts of all
the membership plugins https://chrislema.com/
-Of course MemberPress for making the best product and making our
lives easier