1. Paid Memberships Pro

This plugin interacts with Authorize.net and controls who’s a paid or registered member of the site. We currently only have one membership level (Member), and someone can sign up either by using the code we mailed out, or by signing up for the free trial with their credit card.

In either case, they then go into the Approval queue, which can be found toward the bottom of the left sidebar on the WP-Admin Dashboard. If you click on Memberships, you’ll see all the options for this plugin, including “Approvals” at the bottom. If anyone is waiting in the approval queue, this will be indicated by a red number next to “Approvals.” Whatever email address is listed as the Site Admin email will get notifications.

The documentation site is here.

2. Groups

This plugin controls what Zoom meetings show up for each user, depending on their Groups. It can also be used to control what blocks of content they can see on the site, but we’re not currently using it for that.

The support forum is here.

3. bbPress

This is the forum software. It’s used for creating and maintaining the discussion groups. All of them are currently set to Private except for the welcome message. It has many settings and options, and the guide to using it is here:

Step by step guide to setting up a bbPress forum – Part 1

4. bbPress Private Groups

This is an add-on to the forum plugin. It controls who has access to which discussion threads. It is a separate permissions structure from Groups (above) and so each user must have both—Groups, and bbPress Private Groups—assigned to them to use the different areas of the site. This is key.

There are a number of other plugins in use, but these are the basic four that control user access and participation in the site.