I started out this morning planning to fix some bugs and write a new report on a site I’m hoping to launch soon for membership site analytics.
As things will go, I actually ended up spending the day fixing those bugs by updating my amProtect plugin instead.
So here is a list of the new features that I added to amProtect today:
- You no longer have to edit the wp-settings.php and wp-config.php files because it will automatically detect and use the aMember session. So amProtect will not stop working whenever you upgrade WordPress if you forget to re-edit those files.
- You no longer need the additional aMember WordPress plugin because if a member is logged into aMember and does not have a user created in WordPress it will automatically create one for them. (The exception here is if you are doing something extra with WordPress roles like integrating with SimplePress…but a future update may take care of this too.)
- Visitors will automatically be logged into and logged out of WordPress/aMember together all the time no matter what if the amProtect widget is used in the sidebar.
- If the member changes their password in aMember then the next time they log into WordPress through the amProtect widget it will update their password there.
- amProtect now includes a fully customizable all-in-one member login widget, product/subscription link widget and incremental content link widget.
- It is possible to exclude one group of incremental content links from showing up in the incremental content widget list of links.
- You can sort the incremental content links alphabetically or by the most recent first.
- You can limit the number of links it shows in the incremental content widget list of links.
- If you combine sorting incremental content links by the most recent first along with limiting it to the last XX number of links, you have yourself a “Recent Content” widget for your drip content!
So now, amProtect pretty much has it all!
Bravo – Looking strong Ken!
I just came back from a WordCamp and there is a lot of chatter about BuddyPress. This is essentially WordPress with a layer of social features added. I don’t see why amProtect wouldn’t correctly protect pages and posts.
One thing they do with BuddyPress is add a lot of custom fields to the WordPress registration. When I use amProtect, I “shut down” the WordPress registration and force all registration and changes to the user’s account to occur on the aMember side. I don’t think if they register in BuddyPress/WordPress it will populate aMember via amProtect.
Is there a way to initially have them signup in aMember and then go back and add in this additional information on the WordPress/BuddyPress side? I assume you would have to block them from changing the stuff that was originally set in aMember.
PS: I am not using BuddyPress and don’t intend to, I just know this is becoming a popular flavor of WordPress. It would be good to know it amProtect is compatible with this, for the record. Also there are a lot of Ning users flocking to BuddyPress due to the free accounts turning into paid accounts.
Thanks for this great plug-in.
Hey Grant!
I have played with BuddyPress from time-to-time but not enough to answer your questions. I’ve never put it into a production site yet. But along with version 3 of WordPress which is supposed to combine regular WordPress with WordPress MU I will certainly be playing with BuddyPress more and getting solutions to any problems put into place. BuddyPress sounds like the perfect companion to a member site done with WordPress and aMember depending on your membership model.
That’s a good point about Ning. Thanks for the heads-up!
Ken
Thanks so much
Wow, lots of great new features, Going to update right now and check it out.
Thanks for the great support you offer.
Paul
This is really impressive Ken! Looking forward to trying it out.
I was going to ask you this on chat: Is there any way to possible hook in MULTIPLE Amembers. For instance, I have a site that is generic for the replay of my webinars that I do over at http://www.replaythatwebinar.com — and I would like to post the webinar, but sometimes the membership may apply to another Amember rather than just one that I may use. Is this a possibility of using multiple Amembers controlled from within a single WordPress install? Or am I simply dreaming big time? Thanks either way for making some seriously rockin products.
Hey Jim!
Thanks for the complement!
Right now it”s not possible to connect to multiple aMember installations with one version of amProtect. It’s something I can put on the “to-do” list and see if it’s possible.
How many would you need? I could possibly supply you with multiple versions of amProtect that would not interfere with each other so you could do it that way (amprotect1, amprotect2, etc.). It would be bulky, but it should work.
Ken