The big picture and other tools
Membership management rarely occurs in a vacuum. It's most likely that your members will also be your authenticated (logged-in) website users, a primary target for event registrations, and recipients of most of your communication via snail mail, e-mail, or other means.
Let's consider some ways your membership may impact other areas of CiviCRM and review some third-party extensions that may be used with your site and members.
Common functions in CiviCRM
It's not uncommon for member-based organizations to have a "members-only" section in their website. This secure access area will require a Joomla!, Drupal, or WordPress user login account. If you have created a contribution page for membership sign-up, you can include a profile that has the user account creation option enabled. As contacts complete the membership application form, they will be able to create their user account to access the site.
As you work with your members, it's likely that you are primarily...