Advice needed on starting a membership site

Hi,

I have a few ideas for starting a couple of different membership sites. I know I need some sort of a script but I would prefer something that requires little or no programming skills - and most of all it should be relatively inexpensive (free would even be better).

Everything that I've looked at seems so complicated to set-up. It may take weeks or more for me to get started.

All I want I is something to create a closed membership community which offers downloads, articles for reading and a discussion forum.

Anyone have any ideas about a membership script of some kind like I described previously?

Thanks,

Sunshine

 

Have you tried (or looked into) any of the Nuke hybrids, or even Mambo/Joomla? These are typically all-in-one solutions which may meet your requirements.

 

Mark,

I looked at Mambo before Joomla came out and found it a bit complicated. I havent looked at joomla yet but will take take a peek.

Any other suggestions? Oh, I should mention that I need something that will allow me to collect subscriptions as well.

Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sunshine

 

Joomla is, as far as I can tell, just Mambo with a different name, and yes it can be a bit daunting when all you want is a nice article management system! However it does have plugins that let you collect subscription payments, etc, and once you get the hang of it, it can be quite a powerful tool.

 

Joomla is answer to your questions. It has everthing you need......

 

Thanks guys. I'll give Joomla a try.

Sunshine

 

What kind of script are you looking for, a CMS or a Password/Payment script?

 

Well...I'm looking for something that will give me all of those functions. Af few people have recommended Joomla and I've visited the site: http://www.joomla.org/ and have never been able to find a page on that whole site which tells you what kind of features joomla has.

Thanks for your responses,

Sunshine

 

I doubt you'll find somthing that combines all of those features off the shelf. What sort of memberships will you be selling?

Joomla is open source so there are lot of 3rd party mods and it's easily customised to suit your needs. It's functions are virtually limitless depending on the mods available or your PHP skills.

If you can let me know exactly what you're looking for hopefully I can be more help, but there are 100's of CMS available for different functions, and are priced from being free up to 10-20K$ so it's hard to be exact.

 

Also keep in mind that no script will meet your needs 100% of the time and most likely you will need some modifications done at some point in time. That is when another site will come in handy:

Rent-A-Coder http://www.rentacoder.com

I have countless of projects done on that site for very reasonable fees. I highly recommend it to anyone that needs some programming/design projects done and doesn't have the time nor expertise to do it themselves.

 

Yes, this is very true. Thanks for the word of advice from everyone.

Regards,

Sunshine