Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

By Hamish Gill

22 June, 2026

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Hi all,

Following on from the post the other day about some sort of chat platform (whatsapp etc), I found that the system I use for memberships actually has a built-in feature that would allow people to chat here on the website, rather than somewhere else. The issue with platforms elsewhere was highlighter by the responses, so keeping the feature on-site seems like it might be the best idea.

But, before I do it, I just wanted to get an idea of what people thought – you can see it here: https://memberpress.com/features/premium-community-forums/ and in more detail here: https://memberpress.com/addons/clubcircles/

Excuse the fact that it’s all a bit sales-y and business-y – you have to look past all that at the actual features demo’d in the videos

This does come with a couple of hurdles – mostly financial, annoyingly. The first is going to be the cost of the product itself, which is $699 USD a year. I am already paying about half that for the level of service I have from them already, it is just going to hit hard when I have to find it all in one it in January when the money comes out in one go. Despite my nagging for the last few weeks, they also won’t do me a monthly subscription. The second, is that I will need to get a quote from the tech guys to add this to the website – so that might put a stop to it for a bit anyway.

But, the most important thing is “sign-off” so to speak from you guys – if you think it looks good, then I can start working on the next steps…

Let me know thoughts

 

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About The Author

By Hamish Gill
I started taking photos at the age of 9. Since then I've taken photos for a hobby, sold cameras for a living, and for a little more than decade I've been a professional photographer and, of course, weekly contributor to 35mmc.
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Comments

Michael Zwicky-Ross on Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

There are free plugins for Wordpress that might do the job, e.g. https://wordpress.org/plugins/asgaros-forum/
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

Yeah, I have seen that (and a few others) they are very much discussion forums in the traditional sense - I wanted this to be a feature of the membership system that wasn't so much like a traditional forum, and also integrates with the membership system

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Walter Reumkens on Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

Hi Hamish, the link isn’t working for me: 404 Error.
Also, I’ve got my doubts in general – I wouldn’t know what to chat about. I’d be more interested in being able to get in touch with individual members more easily. My friends here live in five different time zones, some of which are quite different. How is the chat supposed to work? I actually find the current form of communication quite helpful, but I’d like to see more active contributors writing articles. I’m afraid the standard might drop a bit with questions like ‘Which lens would you buy for an M3?’. I don’t know – I’m certainly not a key figure here on the blog. At 78, I’m perhaps too old for chats, and I do other things during the day besides sitting in front of my iPhone. Taking photos, for example...
Thanks for your efforts, Hamish.
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

Try the links now As for chatting - there will be no obligation to chat, and indeed most of the functionality is about members being able to chat with each other via direct message. It won't be a chat room either, just message posts. Those sorts of "forum" questions are not what I am looking to perpetuate either. We have Real Photographers Forum (linked in the header) for that. This is more for discussions around ideas for blog posts for the website and things like enabling people to get in touch with each other to have more in depth conversations out of the comment sections which can become clunky with too much too and fro. I also want contributors to the website to have better profiles, as I think that will help grow a more community feel. Does that make sense?

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Walter Reumkens replied:

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

That sounds much better to me, Hamish!

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vzzdor on Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

https://phillipreeve.net decided for discord for this purpose. I would not say I like discord too much myself, but resulting community is quite lively, and discord offers a lot for free, so maybe an option? You can join theirs to look around and see what you like/dislike, and then intersect with plugins vs member circles scope...
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

Yeah, the issue is, it's a layer of maintenance. Not everyone liked the idea of discord here too... and I feel like offering it as an onsite members benefit feels like a nice bonus for those that put something into the community either financially or with content

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DeeDee Yelverton on Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

I think the ClubSuite Community feature looks nice.
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CHRISTOF RAMPITSCH on Potential Members Area Features (for chatting, profiles etc)

Comment posted: 22/06/2026

Definitely like. One thing I've always liked about 35mmc is that the content is overwhelmingly good and focused (pun semi-intended). I'll contrast this with Instagram (probably the worst offender) which used to be a great semi-interactive platform, but is now mostly ads and unwanted content. This looks much better.
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