Paid Membership - what's the best way...

[Michelle69]

I posted this on VB.com and was directed here, so I'll try here

I've done several searches on this topic here and at vb.org, and I see alot of good discussion on the righteousness of paid membership, lol... and ad-free status membership, etc, but here's what we're looking to do, and I guess what I'm looking for is a starting point from a technical aspect of how implementable (is that a word? it is now... ) this would be, does it require a hack, and is there any other sites doing the same type thing, we'd be interested in seeing your setup.

Our site is very active with about 7,000 members, and run a simple banner rotation which will remain regardless of membership.

The forums will remain free for browsing, but registered members will be subject to a flat fee of $12 a year to cover obvious operating costs (the entire site is turning close to 5GB of transfer a day)

How would we

1) re-direct the 'register' page to the sign-up payment page, then upon completion of payment back to the registration pages.

2) for all existing registered members would we have to re-set all their status to unregistered, or worse.. have everyone re-register? Is there an easy way around this?

Any input is welcome and appreciated
Thanks in advance.