Sitelok stacks make membership sites easy!

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Product Page: https://joeworkman.net/rapidweaver/stacks/sitelok

I am very excited to finally bring easy membership sites to RapidWeaver users. Now I did not do it all on my own. Instead of spending 6-12 months developing my own custom solution, I decided to leverage Sitelok from Vibralogix. The more advanced RapidWeaver users have been using Sitelok for a few years now. However, the average user tended to shy away from the learning curve that it took to integrate into RapidWeaver. My new stacks make integrating Sitelok into your RapidWeaver projects a piece of cake!

This is just the beginning for this suite of stacks. I know that in time, they will grow to become even more powerful. So if you have been on the fence about adding memberships to your websites, now is the time to jump on in!

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Nice!
I havenā€™t yet had the opportunity to do a site that required membership functionality but having seen a few posts here about Sitelok I did a bit of research just so I was clued up on itā€¦ I came away thinking that it was a nice tool but not too RW friendly.
Joeā€™s stacks change all that, they are going to make it a breeze to integrate Sitelok into a RW projectā€¦ nice one sir, thanks!

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I am not sure whether I understand the concept of this stack. If I build it into an existing RW website - is it then possible that someone else who has no access to my RW file can for example manage the whole membership database, use their email functionality etc., all online through the website?

That would be excellentā€¦

Franz

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Franz: the stack simplifies getting up and running in terms of integrating Sitelok with Rapidweaver. When you set up Sitelok (forget this stack for a moment) then someone else (who has no access to RW) can manage the membership database. That can be done right away without this stack. Specifically you need to set up another person (aside from you) to have administrator status.

These set of stacks donā€™t address that issue: Sitelok has its own special web page hidden from your users.

But these stacks do seem to greatly simplify integrating Sitelok with a RW project: which pages are accessed by which groups or individuals.

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Mathew,

thanks for the explanation. Now a new question comes up for me: Do I buy with the Sitelok stack also the Sikelok from Vibraogix or is this extra to buy?

Franz

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Well done, @joeworkman. SiteLok and RW is surely a marriage made in heaven. Iā€™m too broke to buy the stacks at the moment but I certainly will when I can. I can see that Total CMS with your SiteLok stacks would be dynamite.

To answer you, @Franz, the SiteLok licence is extra but itā€™s quite cheap and even cheaper for additional licences. Itā€™s a brilliant piece of software and Iā€™m building a membership site with it (plus Armadillo and Kuler SQL) at the moment.

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Iā€™m failing to see what these offer that the normal Sitelok doesnā€™tā€¦ I am FAR from being a RW expert or ā€œPro userā€, the documentation and support from Vibralogix are second to none and the integration with RW is covered by a manual from Vibralogixā€¦ I found it very straightforward, and I cannot write a single line of code on my own! As far as I can tell, the ā€œVisilokā€ stack is not offering any functionality not present in regular Sitelokā€¦

Can anyone convince me otherwise? Maybe I am missing something.

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Sitelok is a separate purchase. It is prices on a per-domain basis. You can purchase it at http://www.vibralogix.com/sitelokpw/

My stacks are a one time fee. Buy them once and use them on as many sites as you want.

Can you integrate Sitelok into RapidWeaver without my stacks? Yes!

These stacks will save users (especially those new to Sitelok) time. It makes things extremely easy. As for the Visilok stack, my beta testers fell in love with it. Its made integrating Sitelok into their sites much more dynamic.

Over time, these stack will grow. Here is an idea of things that I will be working on addingā€¦

  • Custom path to /slpw
  • Sitelok Plugins: blab, user files, disqus, whois (probably the first to do, since its free).
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I will certainly keep an eye on its progress as I love Sitelok, Stacks and all of your great stuff too @joeworkman!

The Sitelok PayPal add-in is a real winner, any chance of that being ā€œstack-i-fiedā€? Of all the Sitelok functionality that I have used, the PayPal add in has the potential for the most headaches, though I strongly suspect that is more due to PayPal than @vibralogix. A simplified Stack interface for that would be pretty sweet and would really gain some traction with RW users.

Keep up the good work! Didnā€™t mean my post to sound negative earlier, just that I didnā€™t understand what the extra functionality of the Visilok stack was, (as alluded to in your launch video). Does it do anything beyond what the standard Sitelok scripts canā€™t handle?

Mark

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I shipped v1.1.0 update today!

  • Custom Sitelok installation path
  • New stacks for plugins: Blab, Whois, User Files

Screen Shot 2017-02-15 at 3.57.00 PM.jpg303Ɨ504 20.7 KB

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Just got the Siteloks stack as I am brand new to Sitelok and so figured it would help me deploy it more rapidly.

My first impressions are a little below favorable as the manual for the Sitelok Stacks is poor - and that is putting it politely. In fact, there isnā€™t a manual, just a handful of FAQ that donā€™t make immediate sense. Iā€™ve copied an example below.

Compared to the excellent manuals that come with Sitelok (including an excellent one for Rapidweaver itself) this does leave a LOT to be desired Joe. You seem to be promising something that will make using Sitelok a breeze for inexperience RW users, but then sell them a $40 plus in and leave them to figure it out for themselves. I donā€™t want to be pedantic (although I am going to be grin), but you have a link on your site that says ā€˜Online Manualā€™ but it just takes the person clicking on it to the FAQ - whereā€™s the manual Joe? Iā€™ve looked all over, but canā€™t find it.

Can you tell me where I need to go to find out how I use this stack - and not just what the settings mean. Iā€™m assuming I put the Sitelok Prefix on the top of the page. Do I need to do this on ALL pages or just the parent page? What does ā€˜Preview Contentā€™ mean exactly?

Whatā€™s Blab? Iā€™ve just Googled it and now realize it is a plugin that is available from Sitelok, but at first I was searching for a stack called Blab.

And what is the ā€˜User Filesā€™ stack all about?

Iā€™m sure I will have to read through the Sitelok manual that comes with Sitelok, but I was hoping I wouldnā€™t need to do that as Sitelok looks pretty intuitive itself, apart from the cutting and pasting of php code into RW.

Iā€™m sure it isnā€™t rocket science and I will figure it out, but for FORTY BUCKS (not the cheapest stack by a long way) I would have thought a little effort could be made writing a manual or doing a tutorial video prior to releasing it.

Hereā€™s the kind of info Iā€™m talking about.

Sitelok Access Setup
Access By: (button-2) How to determine to limit the access
Default: [false, true]
Users: (input) Comma separated list of usernames to allow access. This value gets assigned to the $userswithaccess per the Sitelok manual.
Enable: When Access By is set to true
Default: username,username2
Groups: (input) Comma separated list of groups to allow access. This value gets assigned to the $groupswithaccess per the Sitelok manual.
Enable: When Access By is set to true
Default: PUBLIC,GOLD

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We do need to update the FAQs for Sitelok, but the example you showed is the settings for the stack, and not really a FAQ. It is just there to document what the settings are and all possible choices.

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Youā€™re right Rob. It is just the settings. It doesnā€™t even qualify as a proper FAQ answer.

I have just added the Prefix stack and zilch happened. So I added the Forms stack. Zilch. Iā€™ve tweaked the settings, but no joy. I just keep publishing an seeing the same insecure page and no request for anyone to enter a username and password.

So now I am going to go and have a good read of the Sitelok Manual. I skimmed through that before buying Sitelok and was impressed at what I saw. But I have to say Iā€™m very shocked that Joe is selling this stack with absolutely no instructions and even including this blurb on the promotional web page:

ā€œIts never been easier to build memebership sites or a full feature user login system. With these stacks, you no longer have to worry about adding PHP code snippets to get Sitelok integrated. Simply add these stacks to your page and they do all of the work for you.ā€

I am sure thatā€™s true if you have some experience of Sitelok, but as someone new to it I can confirm that this stack is pretty useless and definitely not worth the high price of $39. Maybe when Iā€™ve mastered Sitelok itself and come back to this stack I will find it useful, but that is NOT what Joe is promoting it as.

To be honest, it doesnā€™t seem rocket science just cutting and pasting the necessary php into the RW pages direct from the Sitelok site/manual, so all Joe seems to be doing is providing a quick way for experience Sitelok users to achieve the same thing.

I canā€™t see it would have taken more than a morning to write a manual for this as thereā€™s really not much too it, and a tutorial video could probably explain it in 5 or 10 minutes. Iā€™m sure Iā€™ll be fine once I figure it out for myself, I just didnā€™t expect to have to waste time figuring it out for myself when Joe has priced it at $39. For that price you expect a fully baked stack and not a half baked one :slight_smile:

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And it is not suppose to. Joe puts these on ALL of his stacks. They are not meant as FAQ answers (even though they are listed under a FAQ heading). They are there to inform of what the settings are.

Have to disagree here, he does have SOME instructions, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKjRnQJxh_8 - Corrected link to right video

The rest of your statements are your opinions, and not shared by everyone who uses the stacks.

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This video seems to relate to a stack called Agent. Can you let me know which bit I need to watch that relates to to Sitelok, or is it the whole 20 minutes.

YOUR SAID
Have to disagree here, he does have SOME instructions, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zclGdCoQhQ4

The rest of your statements are your opinions, and not shared by everyone who uses the stacks.

Can you please put up the link to the instructions you are referring to Rob as I am keen to get going, and Iā€™ve looked everywhere, but canā€™t find anything. Theyā€™re probably right under my nose, so you putting up a lin directly to them would be awesome. Cheers!

And yes, what I said is my opinion. I can vouch for that :slight_smile:

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I use Sitelok for a long time now in combination with RW. The Sitelok installation and setup is very simple, but embedding it into RW is sometimes a mess.
Joes Stack make it very easy to set up a very complex membership site. Iā€™m very happy that this set of stacks are now available. In my eyes a must have if you use Sitelok on a RW site, even if you are an PHP expert.
At the moment I rebuild a large website, where I used the Sitelok PHP commands. My experience is, that is much easier to make a brand new site, by only using Joeā€™s Sitelok Stacks instead of diving deep into the old structure and chance all the PHP commands on every site. That is a huge timesaver for me.

THANKS JOEā€¦

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Thanks for letting me know that. I am sure the stack is very good (Iā€™m assuming so from what youā€™ve said). I just need to know how to use it, thatā€™s all.

Maybe you can help me WDA by letting me know where the instructions are as I canā€™t find them.

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I think that is the latest video

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Okay. I have managed to find some instructions myself and will include the links below. It just seems weird that you go to the FAQ and there is no mention of these videos at all, and if you check out the video tutorials page on the Joe Workman site thereā€™s no mention of them either.

Maybe you might want to correct that on your site Rob, as it would be a big help to anyone buying this stack and save them a lot of time scratching their head or having to hunt round for themselves.

Here are the links I have found:

and hereā€™s an even longer one:

I havenā€™t watched these both through yet, but they look excellent, which makes it all the stranger that your product page is linking through to an ā€˜Online Help Manualā€™ that doesnā€™t mention anything about either of these videos - and Iā€™ve just checked the email I received after purchasing the stack and that doesnā€™t mention these videos either.

One of them has the title ā€œSitelok Installation and Stacks Integration with RapidWeaverā€. Surely, it would be a good idea to at least link through to that one from your product page Rob, or from the ā€˜FAQā€™ page. It would save new users time. I could understand not wanting to link to these videos if they were rubbish, but they donā€™t look rubbish at all. They look like theyā€™re exactly what I need, and all I need to get up and running and save me half a day figuring it all out for myself.

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That seems to be the same video as the one I had already posted about WDA, but thanks all the same.