This post is outdated. Please see the following article for details regarding the WPTavern VIP membership.
Why?:
The VIP membership area of the forum will help me continue to do what I enjoy doing. That is, interacting with the WordPress community, writing about interesting things while at the same time, being able to pay my bills. The money from the subscriptions will fund me in my personal life, maintaining the WPTavern community and at some point down the road, helping to pay writers. If you decide to purchase any one of the two subscription plans, I sincerely thank you for your support.
I’ve been talking about this for awhile and I feel as though I’m now at the stage where I can tell everyone about the VIP membership option for the forum. There are two different subscription plans with the only thing different between the two being prices, and length. The first subscription option is for $60.00 which will allow you to be a VIP member for 6 months. The other option is to pay $100.00 which will give you one years worth of VIP access. Here is what the subscription will provide.
Job Board – It’s rudimentary but it will get the job done. VIP members can publish jobs they need to fill as well as respond to existing job offers. These jobs are seen by everyone who visits the forum but only VIP members can respond to threads as well as create them. Please read the rules regarding the job board. Use of the private messaging system to get around the need of VIP access for jobs is an easy way to get your account banned from the forum.
Private Forum – I have created a special forum that can only be seen and participated in by VIP members. A little get away so to speak.
WordPress Weekly Aftershow – Sometimes, the WordPress Weekly after show is better than the recorded show. Not often but I figured if people wanted me to start recording the after show, I could make that a VIP perk. So, VIP members will be able to download the MP3 files from the after show within the WPWeekly After Show forum. This is where I’ll be publishing the direct MP3 download links to the shows as everything else will be private. I’m hoping that the VIP members will respect the notion of not sharing the MP3 links to the public.
Special Deals Throughout The Year – This is a variable but throughout the year, I will work with publishers, commercial theme and plugin authors to get special deals and discounts for VIP members. I’m hoping to provide at least one good deal a month.
Speaking of special deals, I’ve been able to work with Nathan Barry of LegendThemes to establish a great deal for the first 50 forum users to sign up to any of the VIP subscription options. The special coupon code will take off 50% of the price of any theme from LegendThemes.com. The coupon code can be found in the Private VIP forum
Also keep in mind that the VIP area is a work in progress. As new things develop or I figure out different perks to offer members, the value of the subscriptions will increase.
How To:
You must be a registered user of the WPTavern forum in order to sign up to the VIP subscription plans. Once registered, view the Edit Your Profile page. On the left hand side, under My Account, you should see a link that says Paid Subscriptions. Click on that link and select which subscription plan you want and go through the ordering process.
Right now, I only accept payments through PayPal. Also keep in mind that these subscriptions are recurring payments. This means you’ll have to manually end the subscription in your PayPal account to stop it from being charged automatically.
Please allow up to 24 hours after sending payment for me to move your account into the VIP user group. You will not see the VIP members area until this is done. Also note that no refunds will be provided so choose wisely.
thanks for doing this! I’ve only had time to visit the forum when I’ve been stuck on something. All the rest of my time is spent coding and updating and supporting my site and plugin.
If I started hanging around forums too much, it’ll all go downhill for my code but, I totally support what you’re doing. So much so that I just signed up for a years VIP membership :)
I had to go back and read this post again to find out exactly how to do it though, just going to my profile on the board didn’t show me anything about upgrading to VIP. A bigass button would be useful.
good luck with VIP memberships, the answers I got from my questions were worth the price alone but the osmosis type of learning I get from just reading the posts will keep my paypal subscription active :)