Could use some advice and feedback. I’m setting up a new online community. I’m not sure i understand the correlation between wordpress user and S:P user groups. I am getting junk sign ups to my WP Users, and definitely do not want to allow them access to my Forums. am I on the right track here? 

Q1) “Guest with sneak preview” and assign anyone subscribing to it? Then set up the Forum to map that to a user group which allows viewing-only for that role? 

Q2) ‘”Free” — Once they “register” and “login”, same thing but with posting privileges in the free forum area? 

Then I have paying groups:   

1) Knitalongs (KAL are free with purchase): Members will get access to the corresponding Forum for each one. The requirement is  they purchase the kit from a separate site. Do I set up separate user groups for each KAL? 

thoughts: the KAL could run as blog posts, which link to the forum discussion area for comments. I could then use wishlist member to allow certain people to see all of those blog posts and link to the discussion? To link to the offerings, i could build a page that pulled from category tags?? 

2) Courses (pay per course): several of them and they can pick and choose which they Purchase, some will be free with registration. 

these will be self-contained courses, mutually exclusive but don’t require a purchase of supplies, the same group issues that the KALs would have, I think.  

3) Club membership (all access): Access to everything.

I’m trying to decide whether to use Wishlist member, OptimizeMember, or Zippy Courses. I think all three use the wp commenting functionality. zippy courses won’t control access to blog posts, but i think Wishlist and optimize both do. Any suggestions?