Problem with membership levels

You could either protect the page with the custom capability (ccap) for it, or use a conditional that checks for the ccap.

To protect access to the page with the ccap, you go to the page’s editor, and in the s2Member box in the right sidebar, enter the ccap.

To protect content using the ccap with a conditional, see the documentation here: WP Admin -> s2Member -> Scripting -> Conditionals

Does that help? 🙂

Cristián

@cristian,

Nice to have you back!

@magnus1,

Although Cristian’s advice would also be given by other users of s2Member (notably cassel), I actually think it makes things more complicated and less flexible.

I would stick to using levels, and I think you’ll find it less confusing because you won’t need to create ccaps and your own conditionals, and instead you will be able to use default s2Member functionality.

The only things you’ll then need to do are:

1. Install a user management plugin, like Capability Manager Enhanced, to remove (say) a level 3 user’s ability to access levels 1 and 2; and

2. If, as seems likely, you’ll need more than four levels, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version, which allows for an unlimited number of levels.

@kts915

more complicated and less flexible. I would stick to using levels

But they wouldn’t do what she needs. She wants to be able to sell the courses separately, and a member may purchase more than one, in any particular combination.

A WP user can only have one level (because they’re WP roles), but can have any number of capabilities.

Nice to have you back!

Thank you! So nice to see you again. 😀

I started a new site for the s2 community, I’ll be there more than here, and would be very happy to have you be a part of it. 🙂

http://s2member.net/about

@cristian, @magnus1,

I started a new site for the s2 community, I’ll be there more than here, and would be very happy to have you be a part of it. 🙂

Thank you! Yes, I’ll be joining soon!

But they wouldn’t do what she needs. She wants to be able to sell the courses separately, and a member may purchase more than one, in any particular combination.

But you can sell courses as levels easily both individually and by bundles (e.g. by offering levels 1 and 2 together as level 3). The only thing is that someone adding a new course (and therefore upgrading to a higher level) needs to do so after logging in by using an upgrade form.

There are two major advantages to using levels over ccaps that seem to me to often get overlooked (apart from the fact that you can then use the default functionality rather than having to create your own ccaps).

One is that ccaps can’t be used to protect content in so flexible a manner as levels (e.g. protecting by URI is not possible with ccaps).

Secondly — and this one is vital for my own usage of s2Member — it is not possible to add another capability (e.g. one generated by another plugin) to a ccap. You must add instead capabilities to a user role, which is precisely what s2Member levels are. So anyone wanting to make use of other capabilities really must use levels.

Cristian,

In principle, you are right about the number of levels for courses. In practice, though, it would be poor marketing to sell them like that because too much choice is confusing for would-be purchasers. And that applies whether you use levels or ccaps.

Better marketing involves offering only specific combinations, perhaps because they are somehow related, or perhaps because you can then offer a discount for a package.

And, as I said before, what happens if you want to add a ccap from another plugin to some courses but not others? You need levels for that.

Could you explain a specific scenario where she would want to do this?

Sure: it could be giving community access, forum access, or the ability to submit content from the front-end. I am currently utilizing all these capabilities (and the last one in two different ways for two different purposes), so that different users/levels have different capabilities.

The reason I am emphasizing this point is that, early on in my own use of s2Member, someone suggested using ccaps. I soon realized that this wasn’t scaleable, though, if I wanted to be able to add other plugins’ ccaps. Thankfully, I hadn’t got too far and was able to change back to levels. But, as I continue to add such capabilities from other plugins, I’m just so relieved I noticed the problem early on.