This is the second version of this site, and although it’s mainstream, it really belongs to this portfolio. Why you may ask? Well, because despite its great design, it’s the most advance piece of code we ever wrote. We created an amazing, complex (yet extremely easy to use) CMS hybrid interlacing WordPress with some high level custom coding and basic AI. It would take a lot of time and space to describe everything we’ve added, and we’ll do it at a later time as part of a HUGE announcement.

Just so you drool, here’s a short brief: Upload a folder with the name you want for the post which includes the desired video. Done. Our script will create 3 different video versions, automatically create a post, assign to a category, display the correct video based on device, interlink with pre-installed credit card processing, define content dripping based on subscription time and type of membership, create rotating thumbnails ………… ufff! Too much to tell. But the beauty of this is the following: the whole process took 1 (one) click. The video conversion to 3 different extension x 2 sizes (web and iPod) takes around 3 minutes. I dare you to find something faster, easier and smarter than this!

Every now and then we were asked about adding membership options to designs, especially to handle credit cards and Paypal. Therefore, since we tried several membership scripts for WordPress, here’s some insight and honest opinions on some scripts and plugins to handle memberships.

WP E-commerce

This plugin is simply amazing. And free. It does most of what other paid plugins do, only that better and for free. Now, be aware I said MOST, not EVERYTHING. The only con we could find is that it’s not very good for membership sites, but it’s aimed to goods and/or services. It will require a paid module (only $25) but really not as good as the rest of the plugin. All in all, I love my WP E-commerce!

Rating: 9/10

Quick Shop

I think it was the first decent WP membership plugin, so hats off to that. Other than that, there are way better options, and add to that documentation is close to none… just forget it.

Rating:3/10

Amember

It promises too much, but once you check what they deliver, you’ll realize you got the same any Credit Card processor would give you… for free. Documentation is OK, they install it for you (tricky, tricky), but too expensive to get nothing. Yes, I said NOTHING. If you want to use it with WordPress, you’ll have to pay even more, and the WordPress module is probably the poorest of all plugins commented in this post.

Rating: 3/10

WP-Members

Pretty cheap, reliable and extremely easy to use plugin. However, not useful for adult sites since it only uses Paypal. But if you’re going to use it for a mainstream site or you need to charge via Paypal, look no further, it really does the work, and it does it very well. One con: the programmers of this script don’t care at all about look and they get to the extreme of using 4 (four) style sheets for the registration/login page, so you may need to do some work (such as editing php and/or using a lot of !important calls in your style sheet to make sure you override WP defaults)

Rating: 7/10

Magic Members

Although it needs some work and polish, it’s my favorite. Not as easy and intuitive as WP-Members but still easy, more complete AND you can use many payment options, including Paypal and different credit cards processors. Plus, if your credit card processing company isn’t listed, you can request them to add it.

NOTE: As of August 28th, Magic Members has announced the addition of 4 new payment gateways

We wanted to send you a quick note about the new features of the Magic Member plugin.
We integrated Magic Members with new payment gateways:

CCBill
2CheckOut
PayPal Pro
Manuel Pay (Wire Transfer/eCheck)

Rating: 8.5/10

In recap, when it comes to WordPress Membership plugins, there are no many options, and if it’s to sell access to sites, I’d basically use the last 2 I mentioned until something better comes out, and if it is to sell goods, services or to install on E-shop CMS, Wp E-commerce is the answer.

The above being said, all plugins still need some work, whether on its visual aspects or back end. Besides, there’s not a single plugin useful for everything and covering adult and mainstream. It simply doesn’t exist, so it’s time to do it… any developer on to the task?

For those of you using WordPress as a CMS or TMS (as opposed to just a blog), whether it’s designed by us or not, you’re squeezing the juice out of this great system. However, you’re nowhere close to be using it at full potential. In example, take a look at this tutorial about using WordPress as a Marketing Tool.

First of all, let’s not turn all philosophic about it, since one could argue that any site could be used as a Marketing tool no matter how it looks. Which is true, of course. What I mean is to turn your existing WordPress CMS in a distribution center for dynamic marketing tools. Now it sounds more interesting, huh?

So, the whole tutorial is extremely easy and although some PHP knowledge could come handy, it is not necessary at all. Let’s create an adult gallery with dynamically updated content using your existing WordPress database. Just follow the instructions below:

1. Create a folder in your server, with any name you want, ie marketing. It could be inside your WordPress folder installation or totally outside (ie if your WP installation is in its own folder)
2. Now, let’s create our gallery. You could use a gallery you already have to promote your site, we’ll do just some editing on it
3. Open your gallery with a text editor (such as Notepad or Notepad++) or use the edit source option of your web page builder program (Dreamweaver, NotObjects, CoffeeCup, etc)
4. At the very top of your page, place the following code:
   
   <?PHP require_once('yourthemefolder/wp-blog-header.php'); ?>
   
5. Want an example? Check our main page: we added the code at the top, and then at the bottom simply added
   <?php get_footer(); ?>
   and that’s it, our footer (which includes a widgetized sidebar code) updates every time we add more content!
6. And basically that’s it. Now you can include whatever part of your WP theme you want to include. In example, an obvious easy one would be to include your header and/or footer, but you can call the latest updates, show them as thumbnails (or text), you can show the new WP 2.9 post thumbnails, you can show a ranking of posts, or if you’re using model names, a ranking of models, you can show comments…. your imagination is the limit!
7. Before I finish, I’m sure you’ll be able to think some nice SEO uses for this technique!

As you may see, as everything WordPress, this is easy, fast and bullet-proof. In a future tutorial I’ll teach you how to create GeoIP banners on the fly using this technique (plus other neat tricks, of course). This is just one of many reasons why WordPress CMS is taking the world by storm and is the smartest choice for webmasters

Please comment below if you have any question or need any help

When we did the CMS for Live Angelic we were requested to add a forum that should be as much hands free as possible, so we started adding a phpBB forum, which we love, but it really didn’t act as we expected. So we added an extremely customized version of SimpleForum WordPress plugin and it did the job. Our client required it to be very very clean and to take out most of its features, leaving it as a post only forum with not many bells nor whistles