WordPress + Your Members + UUGallery?
 

After looking at a lot of plugins, this looks to be a winning combination for a small niche WordPress based site. I want to offer a combination of public free, pay to access and subscriber material. This will be a news blog, some static pages, photo galleries, videos and articles arranged in a book-like hierarchy. I'm happy using/adapting existing templates as a simple classy design is all I'm after not a typical glossy porn site look. The intention is to create a more comprehensive fan site (I'm a Japanese bondage/shibari artist) with niche pics/video, plus instructional material in the form of videos and articles with free teasers.

Does anyone have any experience or dire warnings concerning the proposed route?

Your Members offers some good security, Zombaio integration and a video streaming option.

UUGallerywas recommended here and seems to offer a single solution for pics and video.

The above seem to offer good functionality and integration with well respected add ons, e.g. MailChimp. The only problem so far is that UUGallery creates output in the galleries folder and Your Members seem to require protected data in another (/private?). As a total newbie, I have no idea what is involved in overcoming this. I have some WP experience but do you think it would be better in the long run to pay an expert to set up the system?

if you decide to buy a server licence for uugallery hit me up on icq 45327152 i have one ill sell for half of what i paid for it and ive never used it

alas the fact that i never used it also means i cant help you with your problem lol

Sounds like an interesting project and something similar to what we are working on as well. I'd be interested to know of experiences or thoughts as well.

We've been looking at the S2member plugin as opposed to the Your members.
http://www.s2member.com/

Your Members integrates with Zombaio which is cheaper than CCBill and seems to have a lot more other 'hooks'. It also offers login sharing restrictions, video streaming, blocking downloads etc. Seems to do everything I want. Just waiting for a reply about the directory issue.

Any reason for a pref for S2M?

@moeloubani Why didn't you use UUG?

It looks like I'm talking crap. YM doesn't work by protecting a specific directory, it protects links, so no problemo.

i wouldn't use uugallery for a paysite since it's not a standard plugin and it overwrites wp core files.

so for instance there is a critical wp update which you have to apply, your galleries won't work because of the possible incompatibility between new wp and old uugallery.

Any better suggestions for the galleries? I was just going on some recommendations here and it does have the advantage of doing vids and pics. I'm pretty much a virgin in this respect :-)

After a couple of days, and even with a severe lack of WP experience, I have got the basic functionality I want working! Using P-Door for the warning/entry page. It ain't pretty, I admit, but I reckon a little tweaking by somebody who can mod php files would sort that. Of course, I have no idea if it will run OK or not, so that needs checking out as I hear some plugins run like a dog with no legs. OTH, I don't expect the usual sort of traffic vols due to the niche nature.

I also need to figure out the best way to structure it to make galleries manageable. Any suggestions, i.e. make each new gallery a post or what? I'd be grateful of any advice to avoid re-inventing wheels.

So far v impressed with Your Members. Even I managed to get Zombaio integrated and protection working! Great support from both ends. Just need to clean up the interface and figure out how to mod the payment screens and process. It seems that both YM and Zombaio have join/pay screens. So far only had YM's rather ugly ones working. Zombaio's look nicer but I'm sure it's not rocket science to make them pretty.

Bookmarked, I am also interested in the information in this thread.

Well? Any better ideas that UUGallery? Any thoughts on how to structure gallery pages/posts?

I'm working on a small project and using UUgallery to serve members content. It's still a work in progress, and we're just about to tackle the video end and get it set up with wowza for streaming, but the photo galleries are straight forward and super easy.

I should have it all configured in about a week. Hopefully it all works out as I like the plugin a lot. Very easy.

One thing to note about UU gallery is when WP updates, you have to upload 2 UU gallery files each time. No big deal, but it's something you have to do. I'm sure there will be a fix for that in the future.

@DWB I'm pretty new to WP so still getting my head around exactly what is possible and how. Are you using a standard theme or a custom one? How are you structuring the galleries? I mean, are they individual posts on a page or what?

I'm not sure what you mean by "One thing to note about UU gallery is when WP updates, you have to upload 2 UU gallery files each time." Which 2 files?

BTW, I think Your Members has a streaming plug in. Any idea of the merits of Wowza over using this?

As a newbie, I'd welcome any advice from those who have trodden this path before. I'd rather learn by other's mistakes than my own ;-)