Even if you’re a web savvy designer who’s dabbled lightly in PHP, Drupal is likely not for you. It’s pushed as a CMS, but in reality it’s a framework. You NEED to be a programmer to get anything out of it, or you need to have the budget to hire one to either fix overly buggy modules or custom write what you need. I was amazed at the simple things that I wanted to change that could not be done without needing to write code (have paid download’s links show up on the “thanks for buying” page? Fixing the paypal double email bug that’s existed for the past 8 months? The fact that tons of modules listed in the repository were never ported to Drupal 6? The private download method causing massive module incompatibility? Imagecache fighting with and otherwise screwing up other gallery modules?). If you have to pay to get things working, might as well pay for a fully-supported CMS from a trusted company.

[...] argued in the past that you should use a CMS like WordPress to run your membership sites. In fact, I described two different ways you can have this set up: a) with an external membership [...]

Very, very interesting. I”ve asked Alex to comment on my setup, i.e. using WP for managing member content but Amember for managing members themselves.

Not trying to start an argument here, but Alex Sysoef of HowToSpotter.com totally disagrees and lays out some convincing thoughts on why WP can be a real problem, especially regarding security, for operators of membership sites.

To each his own, but I have found that I can customize Drupal to do whatever I need, and so I stick with Drupal 100% now. WordPress is also very customizable, and a very plausible choice. One thing I can say that works for me is the Paypal Subscriptions Module (http://www.moneyscripts.net/drupal-paypal-subscriptions) running on Drupal, basically the easiest paid membership set up I've ever dealt with. Drupal is also good because of the constant updates, but you can say the same for WordPress too I guess.

[...] Membership sites, Web site building Earlier, we talked about choosing a CMS to run your membership site. I made it clear that my preference was to use WordPress. Now, how do you go about building a [...]