How To Build A Membership Web Site With Wordpress
If you’ve been wanting to build a membership web site so that you can offer your content or digital products to customers and require them to register and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to access the content or downloads, then Wordpress is one of the best and easiest ways to do it.
If you’re not familiar with Wordpress, then you can read all about it at www.wordpress.org.
Here is what they say about Wordpress in the opening paragraph:
“WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”
I have found Wordpress to be invaluable to me in my internet business. It is free, easy to install and use, and extremely versatile.
There are hundreds of free themes that you can install to make your web site look exactly as you want it to.
There are also many premium Wordpress themes that can be bought at very reasonable prices, and these premium themes are available for most near any specialty niche or web web site type that you can imagine.
Examples of premium themes can be viewed at iTheme Premium Wordpress Themes.
There are also hundreds of plugins available for Wordpress, and these plugins can adapt Wordpress to do most near any job you can imagine. Many plugins are available for free, and some specialized plugins require that you purchase them, usually at very reasonable fees considering the job they can do for you.
The first task in creating a Wordpress based membership web site is to install Wordpress. It is very easy to install Wordpress from your hosting account using Fantastico. You can also download and install Wordpress from the www.wordpress.org web site, and they provide explicit instructions on how to do it.
Next, after making all of the initial settings in Wordpress, you will need a plugin to manage the membership chores for you. I have used a plugin called Your Member and also a plugin called DAP to build my membership web sites. These are both plugins that you would need to purchase, and you can read about the features of both by visiting the above web sites.
Both of these plugins include explicit instructions on installing them and setting them up on your web site, and that is not covered in this article.After you purchase either plugin, it is a simple matter of downloading a zip file, unzipping it, and uploading it to your hosting server. Then you follow their instruction and tutorials on set up and usage. YourMember also has a very active forum that is a good place to ask questions and get answers on any problems you may be having.
After you get everything set up and working, you begin adding content to your web site, and you can make the content available to anyone who visits your web site, or you can show only part of the content and require them to register and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to see the rest of the content. You can also require them to pay for access to your download files, either a one-time fee, or a recurring monthly fee.
Both plugins manage payments through Paypal, and once you get that set up, it is pretty much an automatic process.
The plugins manage registrations, payments, keeps up with recurring payments and members status for you, and it’s all done automatically.
You just keep providing more content to your web site, keep signing up more members, and watch your business grow.
I also have a detailed video tutorial on creating a membership web site using Wordpress with a free plugin, and you can see details on that at my TutorDaddy Video Tutorial web site at www.TutorDaddy.com.
Best Of Luck,
Lewis Poteet
www.TutorDaddy.com
www.TutorDaddyTraining.com