Hi,

I am in need of advice to begin building a membership structure on our website gohwp.org so that some content is available to all viewers and others is members-only. I want to research this well up front so I know that it will have the functionality we want before I invest significant time piecing it together. We are using WordPress as our CMS.

Essentially, this website is for a professional organization. As such, we have a well-defined set of organizational members. What we would like to have is the following:

- main content, including various pages about the association, the site's blog, and part of a forum are open to the public
- a membership database based on our organizational records
- once we announce the site, organizational members would go there to create a member account and profile
- this account would grant access to a membership-only section of the site's forum
- it would also be linked with an electronic mailing list script so that we could send newsletters and news via e-mail to an up-to-date list of members.
- eventually, we would like members to be able to pay dues online, and non-members to be able to become members online (thus being added to the membership list)

So, I'm not sure exactly how to get started. I know we will need scripts for the electronic mailing list and forums, and probably one for membership management. I guess my initial questions are:

(1) is there anything in the list above which seems undoable?
(2) currently, we have installed the phplist and phpBB scripts, though we have not done too much with them yet. Do you think these scripts will be able to handle what we are looking to do, or are alternatives better?
(3) does one of the membership scripts (I saw WP-Members, Membership, and Member-Access mentioned in another thread) seem to fit the goals above best?

Thanks so much in advance for any help you can provide!

~Doug