Creating A Wordpress Membership Site

Spirituality

Angel Graphic courtesy of GransGrans Animations

Before you even begin your membership site, you need to think about and then document how you want to deliver content to your members.

When Do Members Receive Content
Do you want to deliver it all at once? That is, when someone logs in - they say all available content.... Or, do you want to deliver content over time - so that members who stay members are rewarded?

Which Content Do You Wish To Protect As Members Only
Do you want to have public and members only content?
How do you want to 'categorize' members only content and deliver that on your website? Do you want to use the 'posts function' and take advantage of providing 'teaser content' to your site visitors? Or would you rather use the 'page functionality'.

Site Navigation
What is the structure of your site navigation? How do your members, and your visitors, navigate the site to find information?

It pays to actually draw this out and 'walk yourself through' the process.

This is a critical part of your membership site design - if your members can't easily find content, then you won't keep them as members!

Layout Of The Site
The graphical layout of the site, the position of content and sidebars, where the navigation bar is etc etc etc, this is very important. As important as the actual site navigation.

If your site layout is not appealing to your target audience, they either won't join, or won't stay a member.

There are several excellent themes available for membership sites - and it pays to have a good look at them and make sure you know exactly what you want.

Document It All
As you work through each section, write it all down - draw diagrams, mockup the layout. Make sure you have it very clearly so that you can share this with your site designer and refer to it as your site comes to life.

When creating a membership site, communicating with your members is extremely important.

You need to be able to advise your members when new content is available, of special events and generally, you want to be able to develop a deeper, trusting relationship with them.

For your site visitors, being able to communicate with them, develop a relationship based on trust and integrity and demonstrate the value of your membership to them.

One of the best ways to do this is using Email and an autoresponder is the best way to do this.

I prefer to use a third party autoresponder as the operators handle all the emailing issues. All I have to do is create my follow up emails and my newsletters.

The autoresponder you choose becomes a personal choice. I recommend Aweber and also recommend 1SC and WAHMCart

When considering setting up your email program, you should consider the following:

1. How you will capture visitors email addresses and names - whether you will offer a bonus for supplying these details.
2. Your welcome email for visitors
3. A series of emails for your visitors that will develop a relationship of trust and demonstrate your membership sites value.
4. A welcome email for your members
5. Will you do a series of follow up emails for your members? If so, what will they be?

Determine Your Communication Plan Before You Implement - You Won't Regret It

I prefer to use Wordpress as the basis for my membership sites for several reasons....

1. It has an inbuilt editor - which means that site owners are able to add and edit content on their own, with very little (even no) assistance from their webmaster.

2. Wordpress is FREE - you can install the core Wordpress code onto your web server at no cost.

3. Wide range of support. The Wordpress developer community is incredible - and they are very active in creating 'add on' code and finding solutions to challenges.

4. Completely customizable. The way the Wordpress code is developed makes it possible to completely customize the look and feel of your site.

Choosing the right Membership Function or Plug-In is critical.

As I shared earlier, integrating a series of disparate plug-ins is possible but extremely difficult. The main difficulty I found was ensuring that each plug-in was compatible with the others - and remained compatible after each individual plug-in was updated. This not only took a lot of time, but continued to require ongoing support - and often the 'membership function' would fail and require immediate intervention.

The development of several plug-ins (code written to extend the base functionality of Wordpress) has made creating a Membership site on the Wordpress platform so much easier!

There are several things to consider when assessing which membership plug-in to use - and the assessment needs to be done using the requirements that you document.

There are two plug-ins that I recommend:

1. Wishlist Member

2. WP Membership

Both plug-ins are literally all in one plug in that is highly configurable, allowing you to choose exactly which content is protected as 'Members Only', and which content is accessible by the public. They integrate into various payment processers like Paypal, Clickbank, 1SC and QuickPay Pro. Wishlist Member also integrates into AWeber, Autoresponse Plus and GetResponse for email management.

There are a number of other options available - which are discussed on Wordpress As A Membership Site

Choosing the right plug-in to use is dependent on the strategy you set for your site.

The Site Layout is really important for several reasons.

1. It has to be visually appealing to entice your visitors to stay
2. It has to be easy to navigate so that members can find the content
3. It has to be easy to update, or update automatically.

There are many themes to choose from although many Membership site owners are leaning towards a Magazine Style layout.

A Magazine Style layout provides a homepage that showcases the latest information on the site. It is generally an effective use of your screen space and when implemented properly can be incredibly compelling.

Using a Magazine Style layout may be challenging however - to ensure that you get the right elements, in the right size on the homepage. A well designed Wordpress theme can make that easier.

Two themes that I like the look of are:

Studio Press Corporate Theme


iThemes Essence Theme


For a membership site, a basic blogging template may suffice - but many site owners find the format too limiting and difficult to showcase the latest members content.

Investigate possible site layouts - and take time doing so. Spend time interacting on different sites, see what you like and what you don't like. What appeals to you? Then, work with your site designer to find a solution that best suits your needs.