Hi guys. I’m trying out ClassicPress, to see if it will work out for me. I’m so glad that there is this alternative to WordPress.
Anyway, I have some important questions. What WordPress membership plugin works best with ClassicPress? What would you recommend? I’m presently looking at s2Member. Is it a good fit for CP? Can I depend on it for a long time?
Please know that I’m not a developer. Just a regular WordPress user 
@anon98749105 Hi. I am using WP-Members Membership Plugin – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org on a couple of my sites and have had no problems.
I used s2Member for years. In fact, that’s how I got into coding. But the original and the other main developer sold the plugin when they got jobs with Automattic (that was a condition of employment) and the current owner (who used to do their customer support and is actually a really nice guy) is a bit overwhelmed as quite a bit of the codebase needs updating. So I wouldn’t recommend it now.
But note that WP Members (which is indeed a good program) works in a fundamentally different way from s2Member. In particular, it doesn’t protect all content on posts, but allows a teaser to be visible (just as many newspaper sites do it). If that’s what you are looking for, it’s great. But if you want to run fully locked down pages (like an intranet or a fully secured membership club) then WP Members won’t be the best choice. For such purposes, I’d suggest Simple Membership – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org
@timkaye So that was what happened with s2Member. I spent quite some time today in their forum reading about the lack of updates and unresponsiveness of the developers back in 2018.
Anyway, I checked your recommendation, but the problem is Simple Membership no longer supports WP 4.9. Minimum is WP 5.0.
How about this one?
This is my second option after s2Member. I haven’t tried installing it yet. Minimum supported version is WP 3.1.
Maybe. But I used another plugin (a portal) by the same lead developer, and it was such a disaster that I would never trust them again.
I saw the minimum version required for Simple Membership, but there’s actually not much in a membership plugin that needs more recent WP versions. If it uses the new time-related functions, then sure, it won’t work on CP. But I’d be inclined to ask them what it really needs of later WP versions.
Okay. Thanks for the insights. I’ll probably go with WP Members for now. At least as long as it is working well for CP. Maybe later, when my site is growing, I can create a full-fledged membership site using another CMS, Tiki Wiki.
But for sure, I’m going to use now ClassicPress for my primary website 
Great to hear! Welcome aboard!
I’m just glad for this WordPress alternative
I am migrating from WordPress.com, and I have doubts about using WordPress for self-hosting. And it’s not just because of the block editor, which has really taken the fun out of writing, but also because of the overall direction WordPress is taking… Full site editing? I don’t need nor want it.
Unfortunately, other good CMSs like Drupal and Typo3 are either geared towards developers or difficult to learn. With CP I can get established much sooner.
Don’t forget the wpseek trick! You can drop the zip file onto Plugin Doctor – function version check and it will tell you what version is needed according to what functions are called.
Didn’t know about this, thanks!!
As I suspected, that tool says that Simple Membership will work with WP version 4.7 and above. So it definitely should be compatible with ClassicPress.
Not if you set the post to “Hidden”. It then doesn’t appear at all.
Don’t you have to do that for each post individually? Maybe it’s changed, but that’s certainly how it used to work. And what about the corresponding menu items or search results?
The beauty of a plugin like s2Member is that you can do this for any or all posts, pages, CPTs, taxonomies, etc (and their corresponding menu items and search results) on a once-and-done basis.
WP Members and s2Member were originally developed at around the same time, but with fundamentally different approaches for fundamentally different uses.
Yes, you do. And the same applies to menu items. It’s easily done though by just editing a post or the menu entry.
If you’re building your site from scratch, then of course you just have to set it the once.
@Aussie @timkaye It’ll take me a while before I can try out either WP Members or Simple Memberships, as I have only just begun building my website. A membership plugin is one of the last few ones I will try to add.
Anyway, here’s a thought. I’m still not sure if I really want to use a membership plugin to handle my (future) members’ PayPal subscriptions. What if the plugin stops supporting CP some time in the future? What then? Will I be able to transfer the subscriptions easily to another plugin?
Maybe I can just restrict some content using any available plugin, and then sell subscriptions separately and directly using PayPal buttons? The downside of this, of course, is that membership management won’t be automatic. But the upside is that I won’t be dependent on any membership plugin.
That’s certainly possible. Are you going to be locking down the whole site (or almost the whole site)? If so, then there’s a pretty straightforward way of doing that with a small piece of code and without using these plugins. Do you have access to Stripe where you are? It’s usually much easier to work with than PayPal.
I’ve certainly toyed with the idea of a separate membership site, where everything is locked down. If I can do that without using any plugin, then the idea looks very promising. I’ll let you know when I’ve decided and need the code
Unfortunately, Stripe is not yet available here in the Philippines. It’s another reason why I’m migrating from WordPress.com because they support Stripe much more than they support PayPal.