Membes AMS WordPress Plugin

The Challenge

Project Type: WordPress Custom Development
Technologies: AMS API, User Roles, Single Sign-On (SSO), Google Maps

Membes sells association management software with a built-in CMS. For smaller associations, that was plenty. Mid-sized associations were a different story. They showed up with WordPress already running, or with a board that wanted it, and they were not going to give it up.

Some of them tried to bridge the gap on their own. They would hire a developer, the developer would read the Membes API documentation, and the job would look straightforward. It wasn’t. Projects stalled at 30 percent complete or stopped altogether. And because the failure showed up as “the Membes integration doesn’t work,” Membes wore the reputational damage for work it hadn’t done.

So Membes came to us with three things to fix:

Make WordPress a supported, documented configuration instead of a gamble.
Open the mid-market tier that WordPress requirements had been closing off.
And keep Membes the single source of truth for member data, no matter which CMS sits in front of it.

What We Did

We structured the work in two phases, so value shipped early and risk stayed contained.

Phase one laid the foundation: single sign-on and event management. Members could log in and browse upcoming events on their association’s WordPress site without getting bounced to a separate system. Phase two added the member directory, with filtering by radio button, checkbox, multi-select and free text, plus geolocation search. Then it hit the hard problem.

Access control. Associations needed to restrict content by membership tier, by chapter, by committee, and by combinations of all three. The obvious answer was to build an access control system into the plugin. It was also the wrong one. Expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and a guess at requirements nobody had confirmed yet.

So we recommended using WordPress’s own user role system as a bridge instead. The plugin syncs Membes member groups into WordPress roles. From there, site administrators use the content restriction plugins they already know and already trust. Membes got flexible access control without paying for a custom permissions system, and kept the option to build something more specific later, once real usage showed which patterns actually mattered.

The same restraint shaped the architecture. Rather than copying member data into WordPress and managing sync conflicts forever, the plugin makes real time API calls and leaves the data where it lives. The core API classes sit separate from the WordPress specific code, so the same foundation can serve another platform later.

Result

The plugin is live in the WordPress.org repository.

For Membes, WordPress went from a reason to lose a deal to a reason to win one. Mid-market associations that would previously have been turned away now have a documented, supported path, and the sales conversation starts with what’s possible instead of whether it’s possible.

The repository listing does double duty as distribution. Associations searching WordPress.org for membership functionality find Membes without Membes paying to reach them. And a published, documented plugin answers “what does this actually do?” before anyone books a call.

For the agencies serving those associations, the plugin removes the failure mode that started all of this. The integration work is done, documented, and extensible.

“We needed to move up-market, but our CMS was holding us back. The WordPress plugin didn’t just solve a technical problem, it solved a business problem. Now when mid-sized associations come to us, we can say yes.” Jason Morris, President, Membes