WordPress: either easy, or epic question – member-only content…

[shawncbarry]

2nd post. Watch you guys on Lynda, btw. Helped me a lot.

After going through Chris’ HTML > WordPress custom theme eCourse, I dove in and did it. But, I’m at a new crossroads, and I’ve never felt more defeated. Not to sound all heavy, but here’s the situation…

My site offers member-only videos and image and video downloads. I use CCBill as a payment processor, and when I had a static HTML site, no problem. The wrote to a .htaccess file and their own DB, and all was fine. When I moved to WP (and only knowing little snips of PHP), I was forced to buy a payment processor plugin to incorporate CCBill’s data. The plugin works by protecting it’s own folder with a .htaccess file, and that’s where you place your content. My site’s ONLY value is the media, and getting it to screen/device. This plugin, however, forces the video playback through a PHP script, making it so slow, no one in their right mind would wait for the video to finally play all the way through. It defeats the videoJS features, like jump-to-here, and preloading, rendering them useless.

The plugin was written to “work best with Amazon S3”, so now I have to consider a second hosting cost to place all my videos on S3, and HOPE they’re secure. That, or go back to a static site and hand-code every update.

My question: I know my processor can write user/password information to my MySQL DB. However, they stop there. It’s on me to do the rest, making that information available to WP to authenticate when someone logs in. Furthermore, I would need to protect my video content with a .htaccess file (I assume), and somehow get that file to communicate with WP, such that if someone logs in, they get the post page, and posts. Those access the protected content. I’d also have to need to redirect them if they weren’t logged in, but tried to access the content. And, somehow let WP know that this protected content is available to this user, and to somehow integrate the login/logout button. So, essentially, do what the payment processor plugin is doing. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = You don’t need to know any PHP to do this, and 10 = Chris Coyier, and 12 guys from Germany MIGHT be able to do this in 6 months), where does this lie?

Opinions?

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