BHEPC: A Membership Site with eCommerce and Community Contributed Content

The Challenge

I first built a website for the Beverly Hills Estate Planning Council way back in 2010. The site served them well as a place to highlight members and post meeting materials. This time around they wanted a site with more automation and a more impressive design. They needed a way to:

  • keep track of which members are active and paid up,
  • allow members to update their own personal profile information,
  • provide a marketplace for members to communicate privately with other members,
  • display a roster of up-to-date member profiles, and
  • allow members to pay dues and RSVP for meetings online.

Solutions

  • Paid Memberships Pro manages our memberships, we upgraded to use the add ons for importing members, paying by check, and connecting to PayPal. This way BHEPC has a current membership list at all times.
  • Gravity forms allows members to post announcements in the “Member Marketplace”. A Post is created from their form submission and placed in draft mode for admin review prior to posting live on the site.
  • Theme my Login provides a user-friendly interface for members to modify their profile details. Custom fields were added to the Paid Memberships Pro for linked in page, company, and fax number and an avatar helper allows members to easily update their profile picture.
  • The Events Calendar wrangles their monthly meetings and a gravity form lets members select a meal choice.

Review the site at bhepc.org