This is a massive release, probably one of the biggest this year, and if you are a user of the WPMU DEV Supporter plugin, you are going to *love* it!

You can now rename Supporter!

Introducing Supporter 2.0, our new premium blogging plugin, which includes *among many other wonderful things):

• 
• BuddyPress Integration!!!! Allowing you to limit BuddyPress group creation and messaging to supporters only
• The ability for users to create Amazon subscriptions (or single payments) as well as PayPal ones
• Users can select to become a supporter at signup through an option or a ‘Supporter only’ signup form
• A ‘Premium Themes’ menu… allowing you to offer subscribers stacks of premium themes
• A ‘Premium Plugins’ menu… allows you to simply make as many plugins as you like subscriber only
• The option to rename Supporter to whatever you want… for example, ‘Pro’ or ‘Plus’ or ‘Premium’ :)
• A fancy new payment screen that points out how much people save if they subscribe for longer periods
• Stunning new reporting graphs and pie charts so you can track how your subscriptions are going
• Brilliant new individual blog modification tools
• Bulk upgrade prettification
• New tab positioning (up so it becomes more prominent)
• Google Analytics for Supporters integration
• ‘Turn off Ads’ and ‘Turn on Premium themes’ for other blogs options for Supporters (like we allow at Edublogs)

Does that sound cool enough for ya :) I certainly hope so… you can go and get it here or read on for some grabs and extra info.

Select an image above to get a taste for the new features, but here’s a rundown of the main improvements in a bit more detail.

BuddyPress integration

You asked for BuddyPress integration, so we decided to give you it :)

Essentially Supporter 2.0 limits two core BuddyPress functions to paid up members only, namely the creation of groups and the sending of messages.

So, users can sign up, participate in groups, and generally enjoy your own site but if they want to start their own groups or message other users (a bit liked Linked In :) then they have to cough up.

And we’re happy to build in more BuddyPress upgrade features too – just become a WPMU DEV Premium member and request them at the forums!

Amazon as well as PayPal

We’re huge fans of PayPal here… but we understand that that’s not how everyone feels :)

So, we’ve integrated Amazon as a payment gateway here too!

You can select to offer your users either option, or both, and if they select Amazon they can simply pay (single payment or subscription) with their registered Amazon payment system… like their credit card.

Kinda neat huh!

Amazon would also seem to take a slightly lower commission than PayPal… but I don’t want to get into that.

Subscribe at sign up

This has to be one of the biggest requests we received.

How do you get your users to become Supporters when they sign up?

Well, we’ve built in for you… and we’ve even given you two options.

First up you can just display a checkbox asking people if they fancy it (pre-ticked of course!).

Or, alternatively, you can send people to a whole new sign up form – which will default them into signing up.

How freakin’ cool is that :)

If the users says they are interested, or fills in the signup form, they will then – after signing up – be presented with a payment page where you can also drop in lots of persuasive content as to why they should sign up.

Hopefully they’ll pay.

But, if they choose not to, you haven’t lost them forever… there’s a little link at the bottom of the page that lets them carry on with a free blog if they wish.

Premium Themes

This feature is so cool I can hardly believe we didn’t develop it before.

Users now have an extra menu item under Appearance, namely ‘Premium Themes’ (they’ll also see it under their new ‘Supporter’ menu).

Under this menu they will be able to see a whole heap of gorgeous themes.

They’ll be able to preview how their blog would look with each lovely theme.

But they’ll only be able to actually use them if they sign up.

Huzzah, check out the below :)

Preview... but don't touch!

Premium plugins

And we didn’t just stop at themes… we decided to do the same for plugins too!

As site admin it’s now completely simple for you to make Plugins ‘Supporter only’ – and even allow for some plugins to be free, and others to be only for Supporters.

Just select from the plugins you have installed on your site, choose which ones you want to be ‘Premium’ and voila!

Your users can now pay for functionality as well as themes.

Lure with plugins

Other cool stuff…

And, like we said, that’s far from all there is in this new release.

For example, you can now rename Supporter however you like – which is particularly useful for those of us who want to call it ‘Pro’ or ‘Professional.

And you cal allow users who are able to disable ads, add premium themes for other users too (we use this for teachers at Edublogs.org – so they can disable ads on 30 student blogs and also enable new themes for all their students)

Of course there’s the oldie and goodie stuff, for example, Supporters can:

• Get lots more storage
• Remove ads from their sites (if you’ve put them on)
• Use Google Analytics

And there are the old excellent options, you can:

• Provide bulk upgrades (quite popular at Edublogs!)
• Configure all the text around every section via the overall options menu

And… if you’d like more, as demonstrated here, we’re all ears!

Just become a WPMU DEV Premium Member, swing by our forums, and ask… odds are we’ll actually sort it out for you!

Oh, and just in case you want the link again, you can download our brand new Supporter plugin here!