How to Create a Joomla Membership Site
Add Free or Paid Memberships to Joomla 1.5, using freely available components & plugins.
For webmasters on a budget Joomla has already proven a very powerful tool. With easy installation through fantastico, an unofficial estimate of Joomla websites is around 5.000.000.
A quick search using Yahoo of the Joomla footer tag ” Powered by Joomla! valid XHTML and CSS” gives 5,150,000 results proving that Joomla is not only a free but a reliable & well supported C.M.S script.
Practically any requirement you may have from a content management site, Joomla can provide through numerous free extensions / modules / components, most very similar to the plugins used by WordPress.
Joomla membership sites can be created for free using a combination of these extensions.
But which extensions do you use & how do you configure them to work with payment processors etc. to turn Joomla into a fully functional e-commerce membership site?
To start you need to have an installation of Joomla 1.5, if your web host includes cpanel it is a simple matter of clicking the fantastico logo “smiley face” on cpanel under software / services.
Joomla 1.5 will be listed on the left hand side in Content Management, click the link & follow the on screen installation instructions.
Next download the Account Expiration Control, Component / Module & Plugin’s once downloaded & unzipped the file will include everything you need for your Joomla membership site.
Installing A.E.C.
In Joomla Admin – Enable Legacy this is located in Extensions / Plugin Mgr
Upload & install A.E.C Component ( Extensions Install / Uninstall)
In Sequence upload & install the plugins – AEC Access, AEC Error, AEC Routing & AEC User
In Plugin Mgr ensure the plugins are lower than Legacy plugin, move using the down arrows.
Enable the plugins
Open AEC control Panel (Components/ AEC Subscription Mgr / AEC Central)
Under Settings / Hacks – Select Hacks & Commit Hacks lower right of screen.
Next download & install Docman ( Extensions / Install )
You now have all the required components installed to run your very first Joomla membership site!