Building on my work at Your Members, specifically the Adult Payment Gateway Zombaio, I’ve finally gotten around to building a better “recommended WordPress Plugin”.
As the one on Zombaio’s site is little more than a nasty hack sitting in front of WordPress without using any WordPress functions or its Database Abstraction Layer, (it’s using Raw Database functions and is not very WordPress’y at all).
It has now been released (current version at time of writing is V1.0.4) and made available via WordPress extend called WP-Zombaio.
What does the Plugin do?
Essentially the plugin listens for ping backs for the Payment Gateway and responds accordingly, creating or deleting the user, using the details passed back from Zombaio, and logging the full result for later reference.
Installing the plugin first guides you thru a easy to use install procedure, meaning no fiddly file editing, or trying to setup and understand ZScript.
Just download, unzip, upload and activate.
Nip thru the (optional) four step quick start wizard and away, you, go!
In addition to the quick setup and user create/delete, the plugin provides a few short codes and widgets, to direct the user from your site off to the Zombaio Join Form and back again.
Guide
Included in the plugin is a guide, which describes how to setup and use all the features as well as general information about running a Membership Site and getting the most out of the plugin. Especially the Zombaio Seal, which can be a little fiddly to get the code for.
Security and Access Control
On top of the basic functionality, is included a method to block non members from accessing the site and providing a Splash Page/adult content warning page, meaning no need for additional plugins required to do this, saving you overhead. All guests are redirected to this page, so content is protected!
As well as this, included in the plugin is the ability to create a menu to show to logged out users that is different to logged in users, in case your theme doesn’t provide this.
To top it all, the plugin is designed to run your WordPress site with “Anyone can Register” disabled, meaning the only way users can join is via the Zombaio Payment Form, and this means users/members have paid for access.
What is Coming Next?
I’m currently working on a update, which includes credit purchase, and the spending of credits on access to posts/pages, (this can be configured to be timed access, for Live Broadcasts/Webcam Events, or permanent access, like a image gallery), again helpful instructions and information is included in the guide on how to setup and use these features.
(The update is currently in beta testing to a couple of users who have contacted me about the plugin, but you can always grab the SVN trunk/current build and give the current credits implementation a go! You can grab this from Extend, no guarantee that it is stable or safe to use in production/live, you can get it from the WP Zombaio Developers Tab)
In addition I’m adding graphs and reporting data, to supplement the Zombaio Graphs and reporting to help Admins set how their site is doing. And showing what users are spending their credits on, and how many unspent credits are in the user kitty!
During the development of the next version, to fully support credit purchase in a admin easy to setup and use method, further development time is needed to create a little form builder, as there are several options, which can be difficult to easily describe using just WordPress short code Arguments, hence this blog post is talking about the current release and not about the next release including credits!).
So I shall finish this blog post off quickly and get back to finishing off the next version!
Can I see more Screenshots?
Sure, just pop over to the WordPress Extend page, there are a few more there!
Where can I get it
You can check out the Plugin here on the site, or over on Extend.
I need Help!
If you have any suggestions, feature requests or need help setting up and using the plugin, please do not hesitate to drop me a line, and I’ll be able to give you a hand and get you up and running!
I’d like to Donate
Cool! I put a quick an easy PayPal button on the local WP Zombaio Page for you!
Awesome mate, thanks for providing this.
How hard will it be to integrate Zombaio with a Shopping Cart?
I’ve not read the Zombaio Shopping Cart documentation so can’t really comment.
I do know that it’s not designed to be used in such a way. But they have made changes recently to make it possible for Zombaio to be used with a shopping cart.
Pop me a email via my contact form, and I’m can come up with a quote, depending on which shopping cart you are looking at integrating with?
It is possible to leverage the Credit Purchase method but there are default charge limit ranges
Awesome, sending you an email 😉
I’ve responded to your email Miguel, hopefully you got the response?
I sent you a email have code to provide that i had created for zombaio some years ago hope it will help you develop more features faster.
Thanks for your comment and email! I have emailed you back.
Hi Barry! Thanks so much for the zombaio plugin.
Is there a way that the plugin can not block category views for non-members? I’d like them to be able to read the blog and then see the Members Videos category view. It currently redirects to the subscription page. There’s no way to change permissions on categories only on pages & posts.
Thanks so much!
It’s something I can look at adding. But all it would do, is you would select the category you want to update and then the plugin would go and update all the pages and posts that are in it.
So not protecting the taxonomy (categories) but protecting the page and posts on a individual basis (categories don’t really have a space to store the reference in (terms of WordPress really), hence updating pages and posts in the category)
Categories aren’t really a “thing”, as you don’t really view the category, you view a archive of pages/posts that happen to meet those search requirements.
But I can easily chuck in a, “Update all pages/posts that are in this category”, (that said as a thing it normally would only be used if you add WP Zombaio to a existing blog/site, as apposed to a new site where you can set the page/post public/private then you write it).
It’s also more load efficient/effective for Sites that have additional plugins installed to improve WordPress response, like caching plugins and the like, as it would work within the confines of WordPress, rather than outside “The WordPress Way”
Hope this makes sense and thank’s for the feedback.
Hi Barry,
Right now all my “Posts” are videos. And those are protected by WP_Zombaio. But the preview of the posts, are of course, shown on the home page and anyone can see. They just cant click them unless they subscribe.
But if they click on the “Video Category X” as an example, to see a list of the videos, it is restricting it.
So I want all posts protected, but allow visitors unregistered to still be able to see the category view.
If you like shoot me an email and I’ll send you a link to the site and a free membership for your help on it. 🙂
Ben
this plugin does not protect file urls so if someone has a protected files URL then they can share it… unless im wrong, please tell me
Correct, you’d need to tie it in with something else like Amazon S3 Storage and time safe URL’s or a Custom Download manager. Which I can help with if you need just drop me a line!
Hello and congratulation for your development,
I would like to know if it is possible to manage several levels of membership/access and which membership plugin you recommend to use ?
Thanks
Yes it is possible. WP-Zombaio doesn’t do it out of the box. But it’s straightforward to implement. WPZ is fairly barebones but should be/can be extended to offer variety like that.