Paid subscriptions experience ?

  • broodje

    (@broodje)


    18 years, 9 months ago

    hi there,

    has anyone got experience in using WP for a paid subscription magazine?

    I ‘d like to setup sort of a newsblog, on which users can register for kind of a paid ‘premium’ login/content service. I’m looking for (automated) ways to handle the payment and subscription service.
    Had a look at drupal, but felt it was to far from my scope, and not friendly in accessing/modifying code. I’m not a php-er.

    Now, registering to a wp blog gives users access to the admin. I certainly do not need that. If they login, I’d need to check wether they are paying members or not. And have some advanced control in user managment. This would allow me to restrict acces on certain levels.

    all experience & suggestions are more than welcome.
    Or if you have more questions on this thought, just shoot.

    many thanx in advance!
    broodje

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Jon Dingman

    (@jdingman)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    WordPress was not intended for a pay service purely because it’s based on the idea of being Open Source (which, if you don’t know, means FREE). There might be a beta or alpha of a package out there, but I’m not aware of any and I haven’t seen any activity of one on this forum.

    If anything, there are plenty of tools at http://codex.wordpress.org to build your own.

    Cypher

    (@cypher)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    WordPress at it’s core is a blogging software, how you blog and what you blog about is your perrogative. As is, how you control access to it. There is very minimal user and user-level support, but nothing extensive akin to a subscription service.

    That said, WP lends itself to be molded into whatever form you wish to give it, but it will definitely require some hacking on your part to implement some of the things you want.

    Certain simple things like ensuring a user is logged in before viewing paid content is easily implemented, but subscription management is something you’d have to implement.

    Regards

    leofish

    (@leofish)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    try http://www.drupal.org

    skippy

    (@skippy)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    First, to be completely pedantic, Open Source does not necessarily mean “free”. Software licensed under the GPL is both free and open source. But not all open source software need be free. Free Software is a subset of open source software.

    Second, WordPress places no restrictions on how you use the software. One requirement for being Free Software is that the software can be used for any purpose whatsoever. This includes making a subscription-only blog, or any other commercial activity. Look at Google: they use gobs of Free Software to great profit. You are prohibited from denying to others the freedoms granted to you under the terms of the GPL, and even then only if you elect to redistribute the software. Running a subscription-only blog is not redistributing WordPress, so there’s no problem.

    Finally, I believe several plugins exist to restrict what users can and cannot do. I cannot provide specific recommendations, as I’ve not used any of them.

    McShelby

    (@mcshelby)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    You may want to try the post_levels plugin but may have additional requirements to its functionality. Take a look into the plugins database at wp-plugins.net.

    Denis de Bernardy

    (@denis-de-bernardy)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    contact me (denis at semiologic dot com) if feel you need to contract any help in your project. a paid subscription plugin is something I had in mind lately.

    Thread Starter broodje

    (@broodje)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    hi,

    Thanx to all to share your opinions, also on ‘open source’ and ‘free’ software use. I really appreciate the platform WP gives me for free to start my idea, basically. I would never abuse it for my own profit, and…I did notice the ‘donate’ button 🙂

    I tried drupal, but I’m having something specific/organic in mind that I didn’t feel there. The code is too ‘geeky’. However I really really applaude what they’re doing at drupal.

    It seems that a little hacking on my side is inevitable.
    Denis/Semiologic, heard of you already, and your site inspires me. I see some parallel thought with my project. I keep you in my mindset.

    thanx again, keep on pressin

    davidchait

    (@davidchait)

    18 years, 9 months ago

    You can feel FREE to ‘abuse it for your own profit’, so long as you follow the GPL. You can use WP, build a site, and charge for access to your content, and you don’t owe WP a penny. Donations are always good, especially if you get to the point your venture is making decent profits… 😉

    -d
    CHAITGEAR

    weswillis

    (@weswillis)

    18 years, 6 months ago

    Open Source is awe inspiring, and whenever I can I like to contribute in some way. But another virtue of this community is that many have this attitude that EVERYTHING should be FREE. As it was already posted, open source and FREE are not the same thing. You have to eat. So if you want to use an open source platform to sell your words, and if people pay for it, that’s great and it really is something I think open source stands for…

    Jason Koscinski

    (@jskcnski)

    18 years, 6 months ago

    I would also like to know the plugin for this type of subscription access. Did anyone figure this out? Much thanks in advance.

    Jon Dingman

    (@jdingman)

    18 years, 6 months ago

    Anyone know of a plugin similar to this, but for a permalink structure of a magazine?

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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