I ended up using Paid Membership Pro and BuddyPress. However, if you’re only semi-passionate about your idea, or don’t have much time to build your site, I would reconsider your attempt. A very basic site without much customization would be relatively simple, but to build anything that is appealing at the front end and provides a simple user experience is far from it. In addition to the two plugins above, I’ve had to add BP Redirect To Profile, Theme My Login, Disable User Login, Remove Dashboard Access, Restrict User Access, SiteOrigin CSS, SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle and WP Maintenance Mode just to name a few.
Then there is getting all plugins to operate happily with each other, which for me has included communicating with WP support to re-establish my sites VaultPress connection, believed to have been broken by PMPro, preventing the traditional BP/WP Login which would allow members to join without paying and much more.
I don’t want to deter you from trying, but if you’re still relatively new to WP and coding, you’ll need to be prepared to invest A LOT of hours.
Thanks for your response. I did since posting this manage to organise the settings so that there is no interruption from BP. Joining for new members and logging in now occurs purely through PMPro. There may be a YouTube tutorial available in the near future for those who wish to repeat this.
