Anyone using a Wordpress membership site with CCBill?
 

Hey all, I am thinking about converting my membership sites to wordpress. Just curious about how ccbill processes the info without a cgi bin? Webhooks maybe?

Was it a huge pain in the ass, or..?

Why WP? A lot of traditional methods of gaining traffic has gone to shit lately. Do you think WP is better then what you have going on?

Hey man. I like it because of all of the scalability that it has, widgets, etc. I just got off the phone with ccbill and the rep was like "we have sites using wordpress" but you will have to dig to see what they are using.

Basically something to replace the cgi-bin, from what I gather.

2 installations of wordpress: members area and tour area. I am not sure about cgi-bin though, why it matters and why you would have to get rid of it when running wordpress.

I have many clients using the combo CCBill/Sliiing with wordpress. To be able to process your transactions and handle your members area easily, you will need a plugin. I recommend you Amember

thanks for the input guys. CHMOD, i will check out the links, thanks, much appreciated. Thanks Kolargol, that is what i was wondering, thank you, i agree with you on that one.

Nope - it's not pain at all. And depends on the structure you're about to create.
Since I'm "new" to the biz - I choose to make 2 WP installations. One for the free section and another for the members area.

Many people say this is not good choice for content management, but this works just fine for me.

Edit: I'm not using Amember - don't need it , even though I was about to get it and use it - CCbill have their stats loading fast and things are better than before, so I don't need Amember.
But again - that's my :2 cents:

Edit2: I am using StrongBox too, just for a precaution.

thanks for the :2 cents: ! Mind if I ask, I assume that CCBill just protected the members area. Did you have to get a custom plugin or anything or did they do it on their own when you gave them access to the server?

What mavruda does makes perfect sense. An unprotected public copy of WP works as the tour. The second installation of WP would, I assume, go into a members directory protected by .htaccess/.htpasswd. It's been awhile since I played with such things, but I believe CCBill's script will write to your .htaccess file to add and delete members. As far as cgi-bin goes, if they require that directory, just add a directory of that name in the root of the domain. It would be really strange if your host didn't support CGI scripts.

We use wordpress for our sites as well.

We don't use CCBill, but wrote our own plugin that authenticates members against nats, and creates/updates the member inside wordpress. That way, the member can take full advantage of various features of wordpres as well as custom features we've implemented that wouldn't work using the old http auth method.

This way, you only need to maintain a single copy of wordpress, and basically just create template pages that will show [this] content if the member is logged in, or [that] content if they are not.

Protecting content was a bit of a challenge, but before we moved our streaming to a host that specializes in video hosting, we ran everything through wowza media server, which worked pretty well.

I messed around testing a WP-based subscription site a few years ago. As everyone says, just have a WP installation for the protected area - all CCBill does is protect a given directory and its subdirectories via htaccess, so it's pretty simple. Cgi-bin would just be in its usual location.

The drawback being you won't have a dynamically updated free area - with posted updates & whatnot - unless you can get the two WP installations to talk to one another. I never got that far though. Eventually decided WP had too many clunky limitations to really make an effective subscription site for our industry, though I know people get real riled up when someone says that. It can be done I suppose, but expect A LOT of work getting all the moving parts to play nice and/or finding new solutions for stuff that just works kinda clunky because it wasn't originally intended as a paysite CMS or plugin.

You don't need two installations.

Use post excerpts for the tour, with logged in users seeing the full post (content)

This gives you a dynamic open tour :)

Fucking right on, everyone! I appreciate all the the feedback!

I run several paysites on wp. 2 installs, 1 for the tour and 1 for the membersarea. You can use any theme you like and NO plugin needed!!! Ccbill handles the rest. You will be happy and never lookback!

Maybe I didn't understand correctly your question...

You will need the Amember plugin if you wish to use wordpress as CMS for your members area as well.

If you don't, I agree with all others with their suggestions, which is, in fact, the easiest way to process.

Thanks Lucy, yeah Marco, I was going with the single user idea, but I might be going with the 2 separate installs as well. If that is easier. I am researching the SEO to both right now. Doing some tests with htaccess, today.

That thing, yes.

Umm. Then what would be the role of CCbill as payment processor in this?
The point is for them to give/gain access to someone who pays to some certain folder/protected one. And that yield the need of secondary WP installation.

Umm. You develop, pay someone to develop or buy a plugin* that CCBill can send postbacks to with the necessary member data and in turn create/update/expire/etc the member directly into wordpress.



*There are several plugins that already support this... magic members, amember, s2member to name a few.

I see... well that should save one WP installation then - and as more disk space as it seems.

CCBill protects /members just as on a "regular" paysite

/members sets a cookie, say, "member = yes"

that cookie conditionally alters the WordPress loop, so visitors see the post_excerpt (say a single thumbnail / gallery image), but a user (member) that logs in via CCBill will see the full post (post_content) This also works for showing a preview clip to tour visitors, but full video to members.

NO secondary install or plugins are needed, minimizing maintenance chores etc.

If you do go with 2 copies, i.e. one for the front end, and one for the backend and protect the backend copy with .htaccess using ccbill's script to add users to a .htpasswd file, then you will also want to get this plugin:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-missed-schedule/

for some reason, updates don't work 100% behind a folder protected by .htaccess

That plugin will check for posts that are pre-posted to make sure they show up on the correct day. In the past I had posts that would be a week behind schedule :(

woocommerce has a ccbill payment module which you can use for subscriptions

I'm currently in the process of setting up ccbill with s2member in wordpress. You may want to check out s2member. They have a free version but I upgraded for more options.

WooCommerce or S2Members will both work with CCBill subscriptions.