A guy a know that coded a new PHP board (based off PHPBB) made a donation system.

1) Users who donated money were given one green star for every $20 they donated, the amount could be set to any amount of money to equal a star. This could easily be changed to any symbol.

2) Users who donated $20 got a pre-selected avatar (an image of a car that you could select from about 15 different colors) and users who donated $100 got to have their own customizable avatar (based on the URL of the image). You could set size limits or dimension limits on the image.

3) A member with 5 stars ($100) had access to a 5-Star section of the club, that is not viewable to any of the members except the 5-star guys. Only they had rights to post in there.

This is by far the best (and only) system I have seen and it resides here:

http://www.probetalk.com/

This WILL be gone very soon though as they are switching over to vBulletin but the Donation hack is being worked on.

Here is a basic posting:

http://64.60.145.228/forums/viewtopi...591&forum=1&37

You'll see there are quite a few members who have donated and you can easily distinguish them, either by number of stars, the default image, or a customized image.

Here is my profile on that board, notice it says how much money I have donated (it doesn't say it on the main section, it's only shown by green stars):

http://64.60.145.228/forums/bb_profi...view&user=4924

Hey Curt, I see you are part of this board too :)

PS: My above post, I said it was the only one I have seen personally, there may be others out there, and another thing, the hack that we use could use some work but all in all it was pretty nice.

Hi wluke,

Any idea on when you are going to release your hack? Just give a date that you might release it so I can know what to do.

By the way my father just did a double bypass at Walter Reed Medical as well. He did very well and was lucky to have caught it in time. Glad to see your father is recovering good as well.

Michael

Wayne, my best to your father and I know what it's like, my dad went through a triple bypass and a valve replacement 2 years ago...take your time as I'm sure everyone will understand.

ok i might started on this hack. if anyone has anythink allready e-mail it to me. but i just want every one to post what they in this hack as reading through the previous posts seems there are a lot of ideas.

i know how to git rid of the banner system for donated users thats the easy part, need the ideas all sumarised

well your first decision is is the subscriber status going to be made by using a usergroup (in my opinion a bad plan because users can only be in 1 usergroup) or by an extra field in the user table (IMHO a good idea).

Benefits include:

1) Seperate header/footer/headinclude templates (to take away banners and pop-ups
2) Different pm storage limits
3) Different mass send to buddies limits
4) Avatars only for subscribers
5) Different post settings on custom avatars
6) Ability to post public events in calendar
7) A forum for subscribers only
8) Turn off limits such as 60 seconds between pm/searching etc.
9) Recognition icon.
10) A subscriber page
11) Automatic email notification of subscription expiration.

probably more....

of course it is up to you but useing user groups destroys any previous use people have them for. As people can only be in one usergroup any past use is gone. I have moderators who subscribe and moderators who don't. Using your system it would not work :(

If you do the extra profile field, the only problems are that it is harder to have a permission system for a forum for only subscribers.

As for setting up a subscritpion, writing a script that does

UPDATE user SET name_of_field = 1 WHERE userid=form_input is not hard, it is exactly what i do and takes me 5 seconds when i get a subscription notification.

i will work on this over the weekend, should be ready by the end of next week

i will try it by adding a new table.

hope it works.

jamie

I would recommend just using an extra field in the user table instead of a seperate table.

has anyone done this and makeing a money money off of it? What is your topic? How much are you charging? What are you offering?

On the "private" forum for paid members perhaps options to just make it viewable to other non paid members but not able for them to post in it. This would be good for sites that have for sale forums, and to incourage people that want to sell stuff to pay :)

I would be willing to pay for this feature in vb.

-Brian

You can do that already! assuming that your paid members belong to a different group, give your normal member group the right to read the forum, but not post.

Yes, it would be easy to control it using user groups.
You just have to be a little imaginative.

I guess the problem for some people is that they started their forums with the intentions of letting everything be free. Then they realized like everyone else in the "physical" world already knows that you can't keep giving away something for free without *someone* paying the price.

But their user groups are based on other things already like number of posts and other stuff so it is hard for them to switch over to paid and unpaid memberships based on usergroups.

If you are just starting your forum, then paid memberships is the way to go. If you currently have forums, then you are going to have to make a hard decision...

People realize that if you pay for something you will get something of higher value than if it were free.
Hey, just look at all the free discussion forum software and compare it to vbulletin! Jelsoft doesn't give vbulletin away for free does it?

I know you could do that know, I am talking about implementing this on the "paid" system being talked about :)

-Brian

Oh ok. I am not sure if the vbulletin developers are planning on adding this to the current code in the next release. Anyone reading this thread care to respond?

In the meantime you could implement your own paid system like a few people described in earlier posts.

I'm also strugling with "monetizing" my Forums. Iv'e read a few pages of this thread so please excuse me if the following points has already been discussed. Warning: this may seem heartless and my own members should not jump to conclusions. Business is business :)

The implication in this thread seems to be that you have to "give" them some new feature (via the hacks mentioned) inorder to get them to pay in an established board. I'm not entirely sure this would ever work.

-1 Why not "grandfather" your current member base and charge all new members? New members have the same features as the grandfathered user base.

-2 or - Why not just "turn the key" and move all current members to a restricted user group. They can read but can't post. After they pay they are moved back to the paid member group.

Obviously you would take some "flack" for this and would loose members but this would also lower your bandwidth costs and admin time.

-3 Some of you could even create a "cartel" of sorts so that if all the cool Forums in a given space did this at the same time the user base has no other option.

Thoughts ?

I "grandfathered" my "active" and regular participating members. Thats the only fair way to do it. Even then some members you may have forgot and that haven't been around in awhile come back and raise all kinds of discontent. But they wouldn't have contributed anyway, depending on their responce I have either given them membership or not, good boys in, bad boys out :) simple as that.

The biggest thing is that the regulars, the ones that contribute the most by way of participation usually contribute even though you don't require or ask it of them, even come back and contribute multiple times.

I know of only one vb board that has restricted membership to only paying customers and that is paintballcity.com and it has worked well apparently.

To be able to do that you really need a forum with little competition or a unique selling point, quite hard to have at the moment. I don't think forcing people to pay is the best option unless you have something very special but encouraging a subscription for some extra benefit does work.

Your right, that's about it in a nutshell, for every site that charges there will be more than a few offering the same or better service for free.

The only thing I can see is that if you have a popular board, the membership may want a private area that their willing to help maintain with contributions. Keeps out the people that just frequent to disrupt things, that could be a perk in itself. But then you would have the problem of enticing new members ???

Sounds like a no win situation. :(

I would love a copy of this hack, anyone know when itl b ready. Im sure everyone is awaiting this one with!!!

Count me in i want a go!!!

Is the hack available yet? Willing to make a donation if it is.....

I'm willing too. :)

it seems that subscription based forums are the way of the future.

As a webmaster, this could be a god send but as a regular at several forums including vbulletin.org, vbulletin forums, phpportals, sitepointforums etc , i simply could not afford to take part in all these discussion boards.

And would it be worth it??

Once again, i would love this hack / script, and would pay for it! I doubt i'll ever go to a full subscription based community, but i have over two dozen donating members at this time that i would love to offer extra features / benifits.

I like everyone's ideas here. I'll be looking at this once we hit the 1000 user mark.

I have a small question that I have with one of the perks in the download.I am installing perks section that involes avatars and I need to add more than one user group to be able to upload custom avatars.Now in the insructions its says to do this

FIND:
-----------------------------
if (($avatarallowupload or $avatarallowwebsite) and $bbuserinfo[posts] >= $avatarcustomposts)
-----------------------------

CHANGE TO:
-----------------------------
if ((($avatarallowupload or $avatarallowwebsite) and $bbuserinfo[posts] >= $avatarcustomposts) || ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] == 9))
-----------------------------

NEXT FIND:
-----------------------------
if ($bbuserinfo['posts']<$avatarcustomposts) {
-----------------------------

CHANGE TO:
-----------------------------
if (($bbuserinfo['posts']<$avatarcustomposts) && ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 9)) {

Which I have done and I get no errors but the problem is what I changed it only sees the first group of users.What mine look like is this

if ((($avatarallowupload or $avatarallowwebsite) and $bbuserinfo[posts] >= $avatarcustomposts) || ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] == 8)
|| ($post[usergroupid] == 9) || ($post[usergroupid] == 7) || ($post[usergroupid] == 6) || ($post[usergroupid] == 11) || ($post[usergroupid] == 5)) {

And this

if (($bbuserinfo['posts']<$avatarcustomposts) && ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid] != 8) && ($post[usergroupid] != 9) && ($post[usergroupid] != 7) && ($post[usergroupid] != 6) && ($post[usergroupid] != 5)) {

What is it that I am doing wrong??????
Thanks for you help as I am very new at php and just cant firgure this one out....Thanks

I don't think this is going anywhere. I'll hire a full-time PHP programmer to work on it.

I have started the transition on my site to paid memberships, and surprisingly, it's gone quite well! It's strange, but it seems that people appreciate communities more when they know they have to pay for them or they'll cease to exist.

I announced the changes on my site right before Christmas and expected to get a LOT of backlash about it, but haven't had hardly any negative comments. The members have been very understanding. Their reaction was not only "Yes, we're willing to pay" but also "Let me send in an extra payment for someone who can't afford to stay." It's been a pretty amazing experience!

I hadn't planned on taking any membership fees until mid-January, but have already been inundated with payments, and the members have 4 more weeks to get them in! To say I'm overwhelmed is an understatement!

I'm running into some problems with the amount of time it takes to process these payments and send out receipts. I'm wondering if anyone has done this or has ideas on these two issues:

1) Automating payments with vbulletin - I'd love to automate it with PayPal, but have read all of the manuals and am not sure how to integrate their subscription service with vbulletin- the subscription forms don't allow for passing a username variable (unless generated randomly by PayPal). This is a problem for existing members wanting to pay that way- unless they already have PayPal and add their username to the notes area, I have to match up email addresses, and even then sometimes their registered address at my site is different from their PayPal email address. (I also allow people to pay by check, those just take longer, oh well!)

2) Emailing new profile field info in receipts to users in paid members group- I'm wondering also if anyone knows how to add new variables to the email scripts so that I can sort the members who have paid and email (and maybe even PM) their receipts to them, automatically including what type of membership they bought (I'm offering 3 kinds- yearly, 6 months and quarterly), what they paid, and when their subscription expires, plus any notes about their payment.

On the two tiered membership- I decided to handle it by moving everyone who pays to a new paid members group, and turning off the privileges for the "registered" group on Feb 1st. They will be able to view the boards for a while, but not post, until I figure out how I want to do things like free trial memberships, etc. Not sure how to expire an account after two weeks.

If anyone has ideas or questions on how I'm handling this as I'm implementing it, I'm happy to help and would love help from others. I wish I knew more php! I can add hacks with no problem and tweak things just fine, but writing new code throws me for a loop right now. Time to crack open some books I guess!

Thanks a bunch,
Kim:)

PS I had posted earlier in this thread that we were trying to stay out of the red till the end of the year. We made it up to December, and then I had to pay for server costs out of my pocket during Christmas! That was the galvanizing factor for the changes, and now I'm glad I had that push to make the tough choice of going with memberships. It was a huge relief and I have no regrets about it. :D

Tigerlily, From reading your message it looks like I want to do the same thing you are doing on my site. My question is. How are you keeping track of who paid? How long they paid? So that you can change thier membership if they do not renew?

Thanks

TigerLily, I've done something similar to you, although we have a Registered Member and a Premium Member. Premium members pay an annual fee via Worldpay and a receipt is sent to them automatically. We then add them to a separate groups which gives them access to more forums and and also marks them as a premium member (plus a range of other benefits).

As far as renewals go, we haven't done any yet as it's only been going a couple of months, but basically we added a field to their profile (only viewable by admins) with the month/year their membership is due to expire. Then every month all we have to do is search for all members with that month in their profile and send a renewal notice. At the end of the month we search again and anyone who still has that date is made a normal member again.
So there's still a bit of admin involved but I'll see how it goes before I change it.

You're very lucky not to have had any backlash. We haven't because it's voluntary, but I think we would if we made it compulsory. How much are you charging?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chrispadfield
I think a lot of us are feeling the strain of the cost of running out own servers with pathetic advertising revenue.

I am quite keen on a subscriber/donation type system where users pay approximatly $5 per month. I am going to "market" this as somewhere between a donation and a subscription and it is the later i need to think about.

My plan would be to have all the subscribers in a seperate user group. Now, the possible things i have thought about adding are:, importantly i am trying not to reduce any current features:

POSSIBLE - very easy hack to add or a feature already
NOT POSSIBLE - more significant hack

i) a "badge" by their username saying that are a donator. POSSIBLE.

ii) a different template set with no banners. I am not 100% sure how to do this. One way i am considering is just doing an if/elseif routine inside the phpinclude template which will not load the banners if usergroup = x. The problem with this is the ugly empty spaces left in the tables if i do. Other option is a seperate template set but i force templates on some forums. This is again the nature of the problem with having the header and footer part of a whole style! It should be independant!!!!!!!

iii) Variable amount of pms based on usergroup. Currently NOT POSSIBLE

iv) Avatar based on usergroup. Personally i do not want to limit avatars to subscribers but it is an option. I am pretty sure avatars are not based on usergroup so again NOT POSSIBLE

v) variable limits on amount of pms sent to buddy POSSIBLE (not much of a feature!).

vi) An extra forum just for subscribers POSSIBLE

vii) Email account @domain.com, integrated into private message system and ability to collect through pop3 account! NOT POSSIBLE and requires a very significant hack, especially for pop3 account which would be server and email program (sendmail/qmail) dependant.

viii) Searching on/off. On my forum this would not be much of a feature but on some it would be a very useful for feature to allow searching for a "paid" usergroup and not for another.

Currently that is all i can think of. Anyone with any other suggestions? From that list the only one that is of any real value is the advertising one. What does everyone else think?

Hi TigerLily,

Could you possibly post copies of the email and/or page text which you used to inform your visitors? I think that people's reaction would vary greatly depending on the tone used to request paid-for memberships, and it would be useful to see how you phrased things.

Hi all- wow, I haven't been over here in a couple of weeks or I would have answered your questions sooner! Sorry about that- the membership stuff is going great on my site, and keeping me incredibly busy!

That was the biggest pain to figure out! I haven't found a tool that is really great for doing everything I need to do, so for now I'm improvising. My system is far from perfect- much more automation is needed, and I'll definitely be tweaking it for a long time to come!

Here's how I have it set up:

-Group permissions- Vbulletin's existing permissions make managing the groups easy enough, but it's still a lot of work initially to filter out who's staying and who's leaving. I chalk that up to growing pains. Once you've got everyone sorted out, it's much easier to maintain from then on- it's that initially sorting out that's the bugger!

-Paid Members go into a "Members" group that I move people over to when they have paid (and that's when I enter in their info from Excel too.) I gave members until a certain date to get payments in (gave them plenty of time- 6 weeks until the changes, and another 6 weeks to view but not post after changes).

-Nonpaying Members- they're all registered category, which will have viewing privileges for another 6 weeks, then they will be moved to an "inactive" category. If they want to pay, I can moved them to the Members group. If they don't, their account is deleted after it's been inactive to 12 months.

-Free Trials- attracting new people is just as important as keeping old members, so I'm giving people a month of free viewing (not posting) so that they can see what our community is like. After their month is over, they are invited to join. If they decide to leave, their accounts are moved to inactive (I want their info on file so they can't sign up again and again.)

-Member Payment information- I created hidden custom profilefields in the vbulletin database. They are easy to manage and I'm working on ways to pull information from them so that users can view their own payment info and verify everything is correct. (I'd also like to send members a receipt through the mass email function by using variables, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to call them the correct way for email functions.)

-Coordinating Payment Info- I found that Excel spreadsheets were a good solution for me. Excel seemed to be the easiest, and cleanest way to view everything I needed to see at a glance, and it's compatible with so many other programs. I have several of spreadsheets in a workbook full of my masterlists (which is backed up regularly!) I have lists in that workbook for payments coming in through paypal and through my PO Box (I had to do checks for my community- my content and users aren't into credit cards, LOL).

-Accounting: I use MS Money because it works well with my online banking and paypal as well as other online services. Quickbooks is a major pain and for me it was a waste of time. It's not compatible with much and you have to pay through the nose if you want any additional "features".

-To keep everything up to date, I have to regularly check a few programs to make sure all of the data is correct. I sometimes wind up checking quite a few things- PayPal, my email inbox, my PM inbox, MS Money. But everything goes into Excel- that's where I coordinate all of the info, and THEN put it into vbulletin.

- I DID try programs to handle the business end of things, such as Quickbooks, but it was a nightmare! That thing doesn't import or export to anything and really isn't set up for online business needs, especially online communities that sell memberships! I ditched that idea very quickly! For the accounting stuff, I use MS Money Home and Business- that does everything I need it do, and interfaces with tax stuff, etc.

I offered my members a couple of choices. They could have a yearly membership, 6 months or 3 months. Since I have to bill more often for 6 months and 3 months, I charged a little more per year that way- it's an inconvenience to me to offer those, but having some choices has definitely come in handy.

I also offered discounts for members who wanted to send their payments in together or buy 1 for themselves and give one to someone else. The result surprised me- my members were buying 1 for themself and then giving the other to another member who needed it or their spouse (very surprising, since my site is mainly women, but it's fun to have the husbands online with us too- we now have quite a few!)

I am using the search function in the admin panel to find people who need to renew by a certain date. One of the custom fields I added was a renewal field so I can pinpoint who has a 3 month subscription and send them an email reminding them to renew. If they don't renew after being notified, I move them to the inactive group until they renew or their account is deleted after 1 year of no activity.

I hope this is helpful! Let me see what other questions there were. This is a learning experience for me too!
TigerLily:)

Yes, that sounds a lot like what I'm doing here. I'm basically using a custom Members group that has to pay to do everything. I'll be emptying the registered group into an "inactive" group with no permissions after a certain date. I gave them 6 weeks to use the boards fully before going to paid memberships, and another 6 weeks to view the boards until their privileges are turned off. New members can register and will be able to view the boards for a month, then they are invited to stay or sent to the inactive group.

For me, that was the simplest way to do it, and most of the people paying didn't want the non-payers to be able to see the boards forever. That may sound a bit uncharitable, but the same people also bought gift memberships for quite a few of our members who couldn't afford to stay. So as far as I know, we helped all the ones who needed it- which was a lot of work, but really enhanced the spirit of our community!

Yes, I found that to be the easiest way too! I like using vbulletin and Excel to keep all of the information correct. From there I can update other things, like MS Money. I also have to check my PMs and emails to keep the gift memberships straight, members problems, etc. I found that centering everything around vbulletin and coordinating the info through Excel was the best way to handle it for now.

I'd love to make everything automated, because this way of doing it is very labor intensive. I know over time I'll find a better way, and now that we're almost through the changeover, I've learned a lot about what I need and don't need! Short of cloning myself, I'm definitely going to have to automate more!

Here's what I'd like to do:

-Activation upon online payment- get the online payments to go directly to the database and then the system can activate the user's account. I know PayPal can send payment info to your server, but I haven't found a good way of getting that info in the database. One of the problems is the subscription pages don't have a username field, so unless a user has a paypal account and sends money directly from it, there is no way to match up the names. You could match by email address, but some members use different ones for PayPal and for their vbulletin account.

-Automatic, emailed receipts- with variables that pull the info from the custom fields. I'm working on this, cant' get them to show up right.

-Automated renewal reminders sent- or perhaps a function that could search the renewal dates, find the people who need to renew, and email them with a reminder- all with a click of a button/link in the admin panel.

I agree- I've been amazed at how everyone responded to my announcement! I really thought they would be screaming "off with her head!" Almost all of the members have been really great.

One of the things I really tried hard to do over the past several weeks is to be very open with the members, give them updates on how signups were going, and answer all of their questions. That went a long way in helping reduce problems.

I had a few members get uppity, but I took the time to explain publicly why we were doing things this way or that way, and that seemed to be all they really needed. They were just a bit confused. Many of them had no clue how expensive running a website can be, others wanted to make sure that we weren't going to take their money and shut down. I think you have to lead your members by the hand through the changeover to reassure them- even if they are tech-savvy. They need to know that things are going to be fine after the changed, if not better!

The only flack I've received was from inactive users who registered a while abck and never posted. I sent out an email to all registered members about the change in policy, with a link the announcement and the mention of paid memberships. The inactive users freaked out a bit. I got about 200 "delete me now" requests, and about 10 nastygrams. But that's out of 8,000 registered members, so that's really not bad.

Here is what I came up with for my community, which is geared towards saving money and is made up mainly of women:
(See notes below it too)

-$25 for a yearly membership
-$15 for a 6 month membership
-$10 for a quarterly membership
-group discount for those who sign up together- 2 yearly memberships/$40

I would have loved to have charged double that, but my members would never pay that. Some balked at the idea of paying $25 a year- but that's only $2/month. That really is cheap! I broke down the costs per day too- it's about 7 cents a day. I used any illustration I could to put the cost into the perspective of other things they pay for and to demonstrate how cheap it was: the cost of two delivery pizzas, or taking your family to one movie at the theater, the code of 2 CDs, etc. That helped put the membership fees into perspective for many of my members.

How I came up with the prices:

I researched the rates before I made the announcement because I felt that I really needed to get the dollar amount just right. It couldn't be too high or too low, or the members wouldn't pay and the community would fall apart without their support.

I needed to figure out how many people I thought were going to sign up. I purposely figured it very low, since memberships are still not all that common, and some people wouldn't want to pay.

I also needed to figure out what I had to charge in order to cover operating costs. I figured that I needed about $10,000 for basic operating costs- server, any extra bandwidth, my internet connection. If I could get more than that amount, I could make improvements and pay myself for my work (what a concept!)

So I needed a price that was reasonable to the members and was something I could operate the site on. $25 seemed to be the magic number. The overwhelming majority of the members have signed up for the yearly membership and have been very supportive.

And this week, only 5 weeks after announcing changes, I hit my goal of $10,000! So I've got the operating expenses for the entire year, and we're not out of January! Anything else I make can go to making improvements or paying myself.

Hope this answers some questions- this is a BIG learning experience, but I'm so glad I did it. It's a more practical business model, and a much better fit for my site than ad revenue ever was, and the focus is so much simpler: the members. No advertisers to please, no networks telling you what to do, just deal with the members. Keep them happy, have fun with them, and keep the site going. I like that much better!
TigerLily:)

You are exactly right- tone is everything! Everything turns on how that announcement is written. If writing is not your strong point, definitely find someone who is good at it to help you clarify your thoughts and get them down on paper.

I love to write (as you can see by the length of my posts! LOL), so writing an announcement didn't seem hard at first. I kept trying to write a formal "official" sounding announcement, and wound up scrapping it entirely- it was missing something important. I had been talking with my moderating team about how to do the memberships, how much to charge, what to tell them, and found the answer quite by accident.

It was suggested that the price I wanted to charge was way too high, that something like $10 a year would be better. That price seemed like an insult to me. I got upset and spilled my guts to the moderators. I told them how much of a struggle last year was, and how I NEVER wanted to do that again- and I certainly wasn't going to do it for a measley $10! LOL! Even though I work with them closely and I tell them a lot, they really had no clue HOW bad it was, and how hard I hard been working to keep things going.

That was an eye opener, because I'd posted about it before, but they hadn't put the entire picture together. Once they understood, they were incredibly supportive and said I should charge double the amount I was asking for. They told me that I needed to tell the members about the changes in the same way I'd just told them. It was the best advice I could have gotten!

So I would up writing my announcement from the heart. I just let it all hang out, did a lot of editing, and polished it up a bit. The response to that announcement was incredible. It was probably the best Christmas I ever had because the support of the community was just amazing.

You can see the announcement and the reactions from my members here:
http://frugal-moms.com/boards/showth...threadid=70630

This is a VERY long announcement, but it needed to be- there was a lot to say! (Please note that I'm turning guest access off in about a week, but by then I'll have some static pages set up.)

It's been quite an experience and I still have a lot to learn, but I've gotten so much from the vbulletin community and wanted to be able to give something back. I hope this is helpful to some of you! Good luck!
Kim:)

PS I hope my answers aren't too repetitive and make sense! I've worked some insane hours this month (and I have three kids!) I'm pretty tired and fried! :)

Looking forward for that hack.....

Hi this is what I would like to do to my board and I am willing to pay!

1 - Payment page, free trial or paid usage.

- perl/php script will need to be written to deposit user info into database

- will need to add field to the database for user type, in order to distinguish between paid users, trial users and admin and Perl interface to pull info from database to site

- WorldPay or Cheque will need to be added to the payment page if not already defined

- a perl script to email the users after their credit card has been verified for paid user with user name and password info

- a Perl script to run a SQL query to run for trial users that searches the database for previous trial use. if they have not used the system before, email the user name and password to user, if they have roll page to next sign up page stating their free trial is up, please pay for service.

- add an admin page to update prices for users/groups/surcharges so it will not have t! o be hand coded everytime there is an update

2 - VBulletin admin to check database for valid user name.

3 - Write script to email user name and password if they have forgotten this info.

- there is already a portion of this created by the vbulletin board, would add to the verification process that if the account is expired that it sends an email stating the account is expired, if you would like to make a purchase click here

4- Database fields to be created

- add expiration dates
- add field for paid users
- add field for paid groups
- add field for trial users
- add field for admin users with unlimited access
- add user type and other fields as necessary
- add index fields for each user type to reduce search time
- add field for pricing for each user type (make adminable)
- add field for discounts (make adminable)
- add field for worldp! ay surcharge
- add field for repeat monthly charges to be automatically debited by world pay

5. Automatic email to send to customers 30 days prior to their expiration date so they may make another purchase.

- This will need a nightly chron job run to test for expiration dates, drop email addresses into a flat file and run a Perl script to email all addresses in the flat file asking them to renew their purchase.

6. Automatic emails to trial customers
4 or 5 days prior to expiration date so they may make a purchase.

- This will be part of the nightly chron job that is running tests for expiration dates, however it will have an piece of code added to run on trial customers only.

- Perl script to email addresses in a flat file asking them to make a purchase.

8. Pop up for users who's user name has already expired.

- Perl script to run a SQL querey to check for expired passwords

- when an ! expired user tries to login it should roll to a page stating their account is expired, if you would like to make a purchase this will be written as a validation in Perl.

9. Single login for individual users, which means that a person can only log into one session at a time, even on their own computer.

- This is a simple verification process. login code modifed to query database to see if user/password combination is already logged in.
This implies modification of code to 'logout' users when a certain amount of time has expired if they don't explicitly logoff the system.

10. Multiple user access for group access.

- This will need to be added to the database and have a perl script check the database for single or multiple user status.

Thanks,

Can anyone confirm these hacks will work with 2.2.5? we're trying to re-apply them but with no success...

And also would it be possible to have one style setting for normal registered users (IE a default) and just allow the site supporters to choose which style they want if we added 3 or 4?

has anyone had success with this yet

In my future projects I am working on a store / payment system for members... but I am trying not to use shaftpal for payment.