I have a WordPress site and a VBulletin forum. I am looking at integrating S2Membership software. Can I use WAM to protect the forum from public view, so it's only seen by members?

Could this be the sequence?:

1. Member logs into membership area - they can see Forum page and protected blog posts
2. He/She Clicks on Forum Link on the Forum page
3. He/She puts in the universal username/password into WAM that was sent to them by an integrated email autoresponder when they signed up

I know it would be better to have an integrated username/password for both the membership site and forum, but the only one that integrates is BBpress, which is pretty ugly frankly.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

I'm not familiar totally with VBulletin anymore, but pretty much any forum software gives you the ability to set it up so that it is only viewable by those that are logged in with accounts. You just need to set it up correctly so that it does this and then you don't need WAM for that. You "can" use it to double protect your forum if you really need that, but most forums have viewing setups built into the Admin setups and if that one doesn't I would highly suggest changing forums rather than trying to add WAM setups to the already existing security features of the forum and Wordpress. Just a thought.

Don't get me wrong, I love WAM, it's a great program, I just don't think it's necessary for forums and would probably be more of a hindrance for your users to have to log in twice to get in.

Thanks Jo Ann,

Unfortunately, a double log-in process would be necessary using S2member, unless I went with the WordPress forum, which really pales in comparison to other forum software.

So, an ugly forum and an easy one-step login or a cadillac forum with a 2 step login?

What do you think? Which one would be the biggest turn off, in your opinion?