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Best plugins/approach to use for upgrades/levels

I’m building out a new site on WordPress MU and am trying to find the best plugins to use to accomplish what I need.

With the different options out there like pay-to-blog, supporter, upgrades, etc. I thought I would ask here to see what would be best by the people who created them and those using them.

I’d like to offer 3-4 levels of blogs on my site.

The first level will be free and will show ads on it.

I would also like to restrict some functionality of the blogs.

The second level will do away with advertising and be a basic WordPress MU blog with a couple plugin additions.

The third level will add a few more useful plugins as upgrades.

The fourth level isn’t determined yet but I didn’t want to limit myself yet.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 7:42:43
  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    I’d like to offer 3-4 levels of blogs on my site.

    The upgrades plugin with some rewrites replacing "upgrades" with "membership levels" or what every term you want to use.

    You can assign what plugins are available within each upgrade package.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    I’d like to offer 3-4 levels of blogs on my site.

    You’ll need to go with the Upgrades plugin then as drmike explained.

    I’m sure you’ve thought this through but just a note from our Edublogs experience… users don’t seem to like multiple choices (especially if the packages have different features). When we switched Edublogs from the Upgrades plugin (with multiple packages) to the Supporter plugin there was a dramatic increase in the number of people willing to pay.

    Again, I’m sure you’ve though it through. I’m just sharing our experience.

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    We have one install that went multiple levels. They spend most of their time answering question about why certain plugins aren’t available at certain levels and folks asking about trading access for one plugin instead of another.

    Works great for multiple storage space levels though.

  • maxaud
    • The Crimson Coder

    Thanks for the thoughts guys.

    I haven’t thought it through to much.

    Maybe I’ll look into a single upgrade option. (Free+supporter).

    Ultimately it looks like the supporter plugin has a lot of what I want with different php functions for checking if the blog is a supporter or not and I do like the fact that it shows them what they can’t have..

    I signed up for an edublog last night to check it out.

    On a side note, what sort of stats plugin are you guys using there?

  • maxaud
    • The Crimson Coder

    Piwik is pretty cool.

    I’d be interested in a plugin such as that or helping with testing if needed but I’m sure edublogs is a great place to smoke test something like that.

    Is the tracking code and everything automated or do they have to create a piwik code and paste it somewhere?

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Is the tracking code and everything automated or do they have to create a piwik code and paste it somewhere?

    Everything is handled automatically. Thanks for the interest but let’s not steer this thread in a different direction.

    Thanks,

    Andrew