SimplStart for Membership Sites
The Membership website has been created already set up with an example company called "SimplMember". The navigation and articles represent how our expert team thinks a subscription based membership website should be organized.
To make best use of this guide, you should have already read the beginner tutorials OR already be familiar with Simplweb/Joomla sites.
This short guide will lead you through the set up of your site and briefly explain what is in your site and what changes you should make first. Some of the links will take you to either the front end or backend of your new site. For the backend links to work, you will need to log in with your username and password before clicking on any of the links.
We call these industry-specific pre-made websites and the corresponding guides our SimplStarts. They offer the fastest way to get online with a professional website that gets results.
Some of the links in this guide go directly to the admin back end of your site. You will need to login BEFORE clicking on any of the links for them to work correctly.
Goals of a Subscription Website
What: The primary goal of our membership website is to have visitors sign up for a paid recurring subscription.
How: The membership site does this through its some of its additional features. At its center is a plugin that allows you to create subscription plans to access different part of your site. This plugin is part of a larger system called "Community Builder". This system allows users to have profiles and helps you create an online social networking community.
The site is constructed in such a way that there are two main parts to it, a public part and a private part that visitors need to subscribe to see. There should be enough rich content on the public side so that both visitors and search engines can get a taste of what you offer in the subscription.
Video - An Introduction to Membership Websites
Community Builder and Forum
The main feature of our membership website are:
- User profiles with Community Builder
- Subscriptions with CB Subscriptions
- Forum with Fireboard
Let's take a brief look at these.
User profiles with Community Builder
Community builder is an extension that changes the registration process of your site. It allows a richer process and can include user-related features, such as user profiles, user fields and lists.
When you create your membership site, you will need to adjust the configuration of Community Builder to fit your needs. This includes adjusting the welcome emails and your own email in the settings.
As mentioned, a key part of Community Builder is the use of extra fields. You can add/create your own based on what type of membership site you are. For example, if your site is about films, you could have a field for "favorite film star".
Subscriptions with CB Subscriptions
The key part of our membership site is our subscription plugin. All the plugin's available in Community Builder are show in the CB Plugin Manger. The Subscription plugin is towards the end of that list.
Clicking on the plugin shows the Payments Center where we can create plans, set up gateways and view subscribers.
Open your payment center (you must have already logged in to your backend in another browser tab/window)
Forum with Fireboard
The forum included in the membership site is Fireboard. It allows you to build support and community discussion around the content of your site. Once your forum is set up in the backend, almost all of the ongoing maintenance and moderation is done through the front end when you have logged into your site as your admin account.
Open your Forum configuration (you must have already logged in to your backend in another browser tab/window)
Video - Basic Features of a SimplMember Website
Organizing Content and Menus
What: Your Simplweb site comes with articles organized into sections, categories, and uncategorized articles. Specifically, for your membership site, you will have two sections, called 'Content' and 'Premium Content'. The Content section has a single category called 'Blog'. The Premium Content section starts with two categories, 'Course 1' and 'Course 2'. You might have any number of categories for your subscription content. This initial set up is an example of how to structure them. To start, each Course has two articles in them, "Lesson 1' and 'Lesson 2'.
| Section | Category | Articles |
| Content | Blog | Intended for a blog-style news articles about your company |
| Premium Content | Course 1 |
Lesson 1 |
| Course 2 | Lesson 1 Lesson 2 | |
| Uncategorized | Uncategorized | Home page (Welcome to SimplMember) |
Why: In your main menu navigation, you will have a link to you Blog category, and a link to your Premium Content Section. The Blog category link will show all your blog articles as posts. The Premium Content link will show a list of your categories (the courses) and allow the visitor to drill down into them.
Once the navigation is set up, all you need to do is add articles/content and it will auto magically appear in the correct pages on your site.
Uncategorized articles will be linked to individually. Leaving them as uncategorized keeps them out of the other category displays. In the case of this site, our only uncategorized article is being used as the home page. This allows us greater control over the content of the home page, which will be important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Read more about organizing content:
www.simplweb.com/intermediate-lessons/9-intermediate/59-lesson-3-organizing-your-content
Blog Category:
What: This category is set aside for new articles to be constantly added to keep your site fresh and current. This type of format is sometimes called a blog.
Why: It is important because you need to show content to public visitors. Your site needs to appear that it is fresh and recent. It also allows people to see the quality of your writing..
How: The Clients menu item links to the Clients category, and will display every article in that category in a list format, so a visitor can look at each client from the list by clicking on the link.
Premium Content Section:
What: This section is set aside for you to place (we called them) courses and lessons.
Why: All of the content you want to be protected by a subscription must live in a single section or category. Here we chose section so then we have a second level, the categories, where we can organize our paid content a little more.
How: The Premium Courses menu item links to the Premium Content Section, and displays every category as a list. The visitor can then drill deeper into each category (our courses) and see the lessons.
Home page (Welcome to SimplMember)
What: The Home page of your site is a single unauthorized article.
Why: A business should carefully control the home page of its website to maintain its brand and search engine optimization.
How: Having a single article be the home page makes it easier to make changes.
If you login to the front end of your Membership Website, you can click on the edit button and make changes directly to the articles. For more about editing articles, see:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/15-lesson-1a-an-overview-of-your-simplweb-site#logintofrontend
Menus
What: Your Simplweb site has a main menu with five menu item links. These links (Home, Blog, Premium Courses, Forum and Contact Us) go to various different types of pages – some link to sections, some to categories, some to articles, and some to components.
Why: Your menu is designed to funnel users to information about you and your business. You want as many people to click further into your site as possible, and your menu is set up to facilitate this.
How: It is set up for people who may naturally gravitate to different menu items so that you can maximize the number of users who find something which prompts them to click further into your site.
If you login to the back end of your Membership Website, you can click on the edit button and make changes directly to the menus. For more about editing menus, see:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/17-lesson-1c-customizing-your-site#changingmenus
Video - Organizing Your Content and Menus in a Membership Website
Homepage Layout
What: The layout of you homepage has a logo in the top left, and one initial column. There is a teaser image that offers the main call to action (subscribe). In the left column are more dynamic links that go deeper into the site.
Why: People look and read websites different to books. Studies of eye movement have shown that site visitors use an F-shaped pattern when they look at web pages. The home page layout is designed to take advantage of this pattern.
Source: http://www.useit.com/eye tracking/
The home page of the Membership content pack takes advantage in several ways:
- Logo tag line
There is a space for a "tag line" in your logo. The top left of your page is a high visibility place to put a tag line that identifies your business and what you do.
- Teaser Image
There are high impact teaser images close to the top of the page. This teaser image will draw the eye as visitors scan the home page and will act as links to more detailed information. The image here is from istockphoto.com, a cheap source of high-quality images.
- Left column
There is a left column to place important site wide information. The left column contains a login box (with registration link) and a series of dynamic links to articles deeper into the site. - Main Article
The main article has a headline/title and important information about your company. The home page should always clearly and quickly communicate who you are and what you do. Your home page article needs to do this in 1-2 short, easy to read paragraphs.
Editing the Homepage
Your home page is made up of the home page article and various modules.
These links will take you directly into the backend of your site where you can edit the elements of your homepage.
- Edit your logo
- Edit your teaser image module
- Edit the left column modules: login
- Edit the home page article
For more help about editing modules see:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/17-lesson-1c-customizing-your-site#editingmodules
You cannot edit the left column article links. These are automatically generated as you add other articles elsewhere.
Thee left column links are modules that show the:
- Latest articles from the Blog category
- Most popular articles from the Blog category
- Latest articles from the Premium Content Section
Contact Us
What: The 'Contact Us' menu item links to the 'Contacts' component. This allows users to contact you via email, or through phone/fax if you have them listed.
How: The Contacts component creates a form for people to fill out when they contact you. When they send it, it is sent to you via email, but your email address is hidden from the sender and from the rest of the internet.
Optional: You can also set up a module with a JContact form, which will sign people up for a contact list on iContact, and email marketing application so you can easily contact them or use autoresponders.
Why: Your email address remains hidden to help keep your email secure. People can contact you, and you will see their emails, but your own email address will remain secure. This allows you to get email addresses from potential clients or business interests. Having a separate page also allows you to track this as a goal in Google Analytics.
Edit the information on the Contact Us Form
Setting up Paid Subscriptions
What: The paid subscriptions are controlled by having users create an account (and pay for it) and then setting up access to content using the Paid Subscription plugin.
Why: Access to content must be user based. It also needs to know when a users subscription has expired and deny them access to that content. The plugin in your site has features that allow users to re-subscribe. You can even set up different plans for different lengths of time, different prices, or different parts of your content.
How: Your site allows rich user profiles and special registration using an extension called Community Builder. We then use a plugin called the CB Paid Subscription plugin to set up plans and control access to content and/or menu items. Setting up subscriptions requires several steps:
Configuring the Paid Subscription Plugin appropriate to your site (your invoice address etc)
Setting up a plan and choosing what content to restrict
Setting up you payment gateways
Note that the SimplMember package only currently allows payment with Paypal.
Video - Setting up the CB Subscription Plugin
Setting Up the Forum
What: Your site comes with a forum. This is a place where registered users can create topics and reply to them.
Why: A forum is a great community feature to increase the interactivity on your site. It allows you to answer questions from your users, but also allows can create a virtual online community on your site as users interact with each other.
How: The forum that comes with your site is integrated with the user registration. When a user is created, they are also given an identity on the forum. The forum can be set (as it is on our case) to only allow posts from registered users. As we just saw, we have also set our forum to be protected by the paid subscription plugin.
Video - Setting up the Forum
Setting up Modules
What: Modules are small boxes of content or functions that exist round the main articles. We will use them to allow various functions, like logging in, and also to provide dynamic links for visitors and SEO.
Why: Some of the functionality of the site, like logging in, is controlled by modules. We can also use modules to display the most recent and most popular content from our site. This offers automatic dynamic content that once set up, will just automagically update itself. These modules will also provide rich keyword links deeper into our site for SEO.
How: Modules are controlled with the Module Manager. We are using several specialized Community Builder Modules, particularly the login one, and several automatic link modules, the Most Read and Latest news modules. We will also add an RSS syndication module to provide an RSS feed of our blog.
Video - Setting up Modules
Setting up Downloadable Files
What: A membership site will often want to make available downloadable documents for its members. These could include documents, PDF's or even media files like audio or video.
Why: People learn in different ways, and often want those options to be available both on, and off line. By providing documents relating to your content that can be downloaded, you can provide more ways that people can interact with it.
You can offer a PDF of any article by using the built in PDF feature. This is turned on by going to the menu item that links to that article, and setting the parameter to allow this.
How: Once the file is uploaded using the Media Manager, we can simply link to it by creating a link in an article. You could have one article be one download, or have a single article with all the downloads you have available.
Note that the actual link of the file is not protected, although someone would have to know the exact URL to reach it.
Video - Setting up Downloadable Files
Change Your Template
What: Your template is the design around the content of your site.
Why: Your template is important because it can enhance, or detract from, the content of your site. Because it is the design around all of your content, you want to make sure it is one that fits with your site well.
More can be found about templates at:
simplweb.com/beginner-lessons/2-beginner/66-lesson-1e-choosing-a-template
Change Your Domain:
What: Your initial URL for your site is on a sub domain of simplwebsite.com. This means it looks like:
http://{username}.simplwebsite.com
You need your own domain like www.simplmembershipwebsite.com
Why: Although you can use our sub domain if you wish, its more professional if you get your own domain name.
How: You can easily have your purchased domain forward to ours. Your site visitors will never see simplwebsite.com and will only ever see your domain.
To do this, you need to use our domain tool:
Change Your Domain
Conclusion
So, here we have set up a powerful community website that has content protected through paid subscriptions.
This package is now available. To find out more, head to our Simplweb Membership Website info page.