Joomla! aMember plugin...

Hello,

I am interested in aMember integration with Joomla! I have read all the posts on this and understand in a roundabout sort of way how this works although I still need an answer to some fundamental questions. I would appreciate anyones help who has gone down this route or from Alex, who wrote the Joomla! plugin for aMember.

1. Say I have a new webhost account with nothing uploaded yet. Do I install aMember first or Joomla!, does the order matter?

2. Joomla! does NOT seems to protect any folders/content from direct access as aMember does. Instead it provides anti-leeching security to HIDE the url to your protected content but doesn't actually protect it if someone knows the path. Is this true, I think so but need clarification.

3. If (2.) is correct then if you choose to protect some folders under the Joomla! default installation directory (through aMember) then does this cause any problems uploading any new content into Joomla! via the control panel etc? i.e. write-access errors!

4. Do I have to disable the registration in Joomla! CP and let ALL registrations take place on the aMember side, if so how do you get the aMember login box to appear on your Joomla! pages? The location of the Joomla! login box is controlled in the CP and you can switch it on/off through the CP.

5. What if a user wants to alter account details, do they goto aMember or Joomla! section, as both have forms to update name, address, password etc. If it is via aMember then do you have to switch off the user menu in Joomla!, is this the usual approach.

6. So, if I have a video tutorial say that I only want registered users to access I would set up a protected folder in aMember and then store my video tutorial there, yes? And then I could publish an article on my Joomla! site that only registered users could access that embedded this video. If someone tries to access the page they should get directed to the not logged in page if they are a guest. If the see the HTML code then they may try to access the video folder DIRECTLY but aMember will have protected this so they can't!! Is this correct?

Any other comments would be REALLY appreciated, thanks.

Thanks for your help/comments Alex (as usual ).

I would appreciate comments from anyone else with experience of Joomla! and aMember working together. Thanks.

David

Alex, I forgot to ask:

If I had Joomla! working with aMember plugin, would I be able to setup products in aMember so that some content was only available to registered users but FREE. i.e. they didn't have to go to a payment sign up page. Really here I just want a folder and its contents to be locked and protected from direct access (Joomla does this for pages but NOT for the media contained in a webpage - i.e. images, videos, pdf's, ppt's etc.). I know that I could achieve registered only access for FREE in Joomla! without aMember but it would lock the folder!! Is this clear, I think it is.

Would I be able to add more products later that DID need a payment to be completed? i.e. have some free content (that needs registering for), and some payable content (that needs registering AND payment for)?

Thanks,

David

That's true for text content, but if you have some files (pdf, videos etc.) ten the folder they are stored in cannot be protected bydefault. I know this because I installed Joomla! for my website at work and added some content. On some of these pages I added links to download pdf files. Now the folder on the server where these files are stored are NOT protected. I know this because I loaded the path into a browser and could get access to the file DIRECTLY.

David

If you want to use Joomla for protecting content on more than one level, use JUGA and create a plugin for Amember to add a user to a JUGA group when purchasing a given product/subscription.

We are doing this with JBAM, but since it is no longer under development, I would recommend using JUGA.

For web pages:
If you can do a little php, you can hack the com_content module and add the php_include code to it to allow specific access to specific sections or categories.

For the pdf, videos etc..
Place them in a directory and protect the directory with aMember new_rewrite protection.

David
__________________
Discover How to Start-Up and Run a Profitable Membership Site
==> Membership Academy <==
aMember Install Videos and Hacks, Joomla /Wordpress integration.

Would this approch work with community builder?
Alow free membership thru CB login with $0 product in amember then create another user group with JUGA and use amember to protect/upsell for paid membership to content that user group would have access to?

Not sure if this is possible, basicaly I want to allow free membership to the community and paid membership to the content. This requires three user groups: public, registered and paid member.

Could I achieve this setup with community builder or without CB?

I haven't used community builder yet, but the hack that I use does not use JUGA. On my site I have 3 levels of membership, free, registered, and paid.
The paid function is controlled by a hack to the com_content module, so I assume if you used it, community builder would still be available to your free or registered members, whereas the paid content would still be protected.

David

Joomla with Amember

Hi, thought I would share my experiences with you.

Have a joomla system being used to restrict content to specified membership levels, and I had all of the same questions as you. This is what I did to solve them all.

1. Joomla offers public and registered groups, however I needed to have public (very restricted) registered (slightly more visible) and paid member (full unrestricted access)

I installed JACLplus, and used this to define the paid membership group. NOTE, Amember recognised this new group right away.

That resolved the group levels situation.

Amember now offers free registration, paid membership on several levels, and each account is generated in joomla automatically for me with the right level of access.

It works very very well.

I also have integration with paypal and 1shoppingcart and phplist is being added now.

Hope this helps, but if you wanna ask me anything feel free to do so.

Oh, and I tried using CB but it was too complexed to get working, and I found it was not needed to achieve my goal.

Thanks for the info., I do have a few questions if you don't mind.

So with JACLplus Amember recognized this new group right away.
Did you create more than one paid membership level or just the one?
Do you have any experiance with other user group plugins?

How does it work when users register for free access vs. paid access, as far as the registration page they are sent too?

Are you willing to share your site URL so I can take a look at how you have it set up?

Thanks again.

Updates on your questions.

Dont mind at all, ask as many as you need.

...So with JACLplus Amember recognized this new group right away.
...Did you create more than one paid membership level or just the one?
...Do you have any experiance with other user group plugins?

I only had to create a single grou. The system I am working on offers public, non registered user access levels, registered but not paid, and paid subscription options of which there are 3 types.

So, in summary

Public -> can access what I want them to see, mainly into text content only
Registered -> as above but with a few additonal content areas
Subscribed -> can access entire content, including main, and also some of the functions within the site itself.

In amember I simply setup 4 products, prod1 is free, 2 is 1 month at a cost, 2 and 3 are 6 months and 12 months at costs. After the user selects the option they want (assume paid membership) they are sent a confirmation email, once the confirm this in the email, they are taken to the 1shoppingcart page to make payment, once payment has been made amember gets confirmation of this from 1shoppingcart and the account is enabled, and the user upon ending the payment process is taken directly to the joomla site and logged in automatically.

...How does it work when users register for free access vs. paid access, as ...far as the registration page they are sent too?

This was a litle tricky. I have an SEO component installed, and it does not mater which one you use, what happens is the Amember Mambot is obviousley programmed to use the standard non SEO url link, so when no SEO is installed, a user on the site clicks register link and is taken to the amember page with the products on it. With SEO this link does not work so you need ot modify the registration component page and module to direct to the correct url.

What I ended up (or will end up doing) is creating a static page within joomla detailing the options open to them, selling the site etc, and links placed here are directly to the Joomla php register page

Summary: The registration page in joomla is bypassed when amember and joomla are integrated, so you should not see the joomla registration page, amember registers the user and pushes the user information into the joomla database directly for you.

Are you willing to share your site URL so I can take a look at how you have it set up?

You can look at the site now, however some links are not as yet correct. the register one is currently the way it shoudl be, directed to amember.

http://www.propertyprofessor.co.uk is the site address.

Since joomla already offers levels of security I am simply using those, public and registered users get to see intro text, but not the main text, and other similar areas. I have also set up the site so when non registered paid members are on the site links are visible in specific places, however once logged in these will not be visible (click here to register is pointless if the user is already logged in.
Thanks again.[/QUOTE]

Things to note when viewing the site

A few thins to look at are as follows.

As a public non registered user.

Left column: menu links suggest registering.
Click view Recent Investor Questions, the question text is only the intro portion of the page within Joomla, the blue link underneath states to find out how to view the answer (subscribers only can view the main content of the page) however is you are a subscribed paid member, this text will instead display view the answer.

Hope this helps.

Components being used include Jacplus, SEO component, JASubmit, Xmap, SWMenuMaker.

SWMenumake is real handy, lets you create multiple seperate menu systems based on the stock ones within Joomla.
JASubmit is a question submission system, I modified it to not include the main text, so when a member posts a question it appears as the intro text of a new document, the answer is then placed into the main part and there you have it.
Xmap is a simple site map generator.
SEO system in use is SH404SEF, tried about 5 others but they are all the very same.

Things to do: CSS mods for firefox compatibility

JaclPlus works real well with Joomla and aMember
Heres a demo site: http://www.joomlamember.com
It has public/registered/silver/gold levels, user forums, search engine friendly urls etc..

David

Thanks again for the info.

I like the way your site is set up Spottedhaggis. That is exactly what I was looking to achive. the look and feel is also very nice. Just a few more questions if you don't mind.

The registration page is the amember registration page you customized or a joomla page you created? Were their any other modifications you made to the registration process to get to work this way?

Are you using a auto responder to send the confirmation e-mails and if so which one? I was planning on using aweber with my site.

Are you planning to add community builder to your site?

Thanks again.

Struggling with amember_mambot for Joomla registration

Hi,

First of all, thanks Alex for the timely install yesterday!

I am struggling to get the login/registration on the aMember side to show on my homepage. This is a Joomla site and I have unpublished my login module.

I am confident that I followed the instructions for the Joomla Integration Plug-in.

Please help.

Thanks

Problem Solved

I managed to get it working. Not exactly sure why, a little luck I suppose.

To all - a great day!

I managed to get it working. Not exactly sure why, a little luck I suppose.

To all - a great day!

====================

Do you mind sharing how you got it it work. Mine doesn't Ive been working on it for 2 days solid.

Thanks