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By default Out-of-the-box’ wp.mu you have the WPMU DEV Premium Supporter mu-plugin installed . This adds a Supporter tab to your Site Admin.

About the Supporter Tab

The whole purpose of supporter is to provide a mechanism for making money from your site, using PayPal, by having blog features that your user needs to ‘pay to access.’ Check out ‘Making money from WordPress MU – the Edublogs story so far!’

For example:
1. Free users - have ads on their site, no access to plugins, no access to other extra features, reduced storage space etc.
2. Supporters – have no ads on their blog, masses of plugins, other great features, 5GB space of storage space and a nice supporter’s badge etc

PLEASE NOTE:

1. Supporter is based on per blog not per user
2. If you don’t want to use the supporter option but want users to have access to plugins tab you will need to either:

a) Disable supporter by removing the Supporter plugin from your wp-content/mu-plugins/ directory.
b) Or alternatively you can set the options in Site Admin > Supporter to give new users 365 free days as a ‘Supporter’ so that they can use plugins from the start.

How to Set up Supporter

Click on Site Admin > Supporter and scroll down to Settings. Here you will need to:

1. Select the currency you want you users to pay their supporter subscription with

2. Enter your PayPal Email address

3. Select the country of origin for your PayPal site

4. You ONLY change PayPal mode to Test Mode when you want to test that Supporter is working using PayPal’s sandpit site.

You will keep this set to Live Site when you want your users to be able to subscribe using PayPal.

5. Select whether you want users to:

a. Make single payments
b. Or alternatively have their subscription costs automatically deducted from PayPal

NOTE: With singe payments your users will need to wait for their subscription to expire before they can renew. This means they may lose features they desire will waiting for payment to be processed.

6. Set the cost for each time period. For example, below is currently displaying USD$1.00 for each time period.

7. Set the number of free days for all new blogs.

You can use this to give all new users supporter subscription for a designated period for them to check out the extra features. At the end of this period their blogs will revert to free blog users and lose all extra features.

8. Insert your supporter message.

This is the message that appears at the top of the page when your users click on their Supporter Tab.

Here is the message used on Edublogs:

9. The Supporter Feature Message is the message non-supporters will see if they click on the disable ads tab.

10. Keep all Payment Message and Recurring Payment Message the same.

11. Transaction tab?
12. Default is all users are provided access to Google Analytics. However you can change this so only supporter can access this feature.

13. Ads Message is the message below the limited to supporter message that non-supporters will see if they click on the disable ads tab.

Here is the message used on Edublogs:

14. Select the storage space quota increase available for supporters.

15. Click Save Changes.

How to Manually Upgrade a Blog to Supporter Status

You can manually upgrade a blog to supporter status by:

1. Locate the blog you want to upgrade by either:

a. Searching for the specific blog by clicking on Admin

b. Clicking on Blogs

2. Once you have located the blog copy its ID number.

3. Click on Supporter Tab

4. Under Extend blog add the blog ID number, select the numbers of days you want to make a supporter for and then click continue.

5. This upgrades the blog and displays a message in on the supporter page showing number of subscription days remaining.

NOTE: Your user will need to wait for this subscription to expire before it can be renewed. This means they may lose features they desire will waiting for payment to be processed.

See Next: Plugins available for Supporters