Reoccurring Paypal Subscriptions

What this does (added in first post)

With the current vbulletin subscription set up, it only charges your members one time. So if you have a pay based site, or forum area they have to keep subscribing, and causing them to waste time and effort (and maybe you lose money)

What this does, is give you the option if you want one time payment (standard vb) or reoccurring payment.

When you choose reoccurring the script has them sign up for a reoccurring payment, as paypal sends you confirmation each time you get a subscription payment, your system will now update their access time.

This will save your members from having to resign up all the time and hopefully save you some money


For instance, say you have a paying member?s only area, and you want them to have to pay $10 a month.

With this you can charge per month and it handles all the charges, and every month they send another payment automatically your script gets updated and sets their new expiration.


This has been asked for many times and IMO should have been in to begin with.

Enjoy and I will help as I can.

Note from the new supporter: This hack is now being actively supported again. I have updated the install instructions to work for version 3.0.7, and we can now begin to work out any existing bugs. This code is still raw and has not been tested extensively due to the difficult nature of testing paypal transactions.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Originally Posted by MajorFm.com

is this working on 3.0.7?

Are you making a joke?

Just read 1 post above yours.

[MajorFm.com]

lol... whoooops... just did a quick reply... flicked through the thread and missed that! thanks!

[Dragon_Z]

I installed this and got this error whenI attempted to run the SQL Query, forgive me if this is simple but this is only my first day at this.

ALTER TABLE `subscription` ADD `reoccur` VARCHAR( 10 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ;

An error occurred while attempting to execute your query. The following information was returned.
error number: 1146
error desc: Table 'zforum.subscription' doesn't exist

[Illuvatar]

Well....hmmmmm...

I just had one of my users send me this

Subject: Paid Subscription Expiry Notice

Hello,

Your access to the paid subscription "Silver Subscriber Monthly" is about
to expire.
To extend this you must visit
http://www.warofthering.net/forums/v...scriptions.php

If you do not extend your subscription access will be removed.

Yours,
War of the Ring Community team

Now this concerns me for obvious reasons. The subscription is indeed showing as recurring in the Subscription Manager, but of course the expiry date remains the same whether it says recurring or not, and I'm assuming here that this automatic notification is based on the expiry date.

I'm going to tell this user not to do anything and let's see what it does. Has anyone else ran into this?

Thanks!

[thenewuser]

I just did this, and now when people sign up they don't get access to the forums...

Please help me I've had to manually add over 100 people alone today.

[amykhar]

To keep the original author from losing credit for his work, I am adopting this abandoned baby. I have updated the install instructions to get them right for vb 3.0.7 and am including them here until an admin adds me to the support list.

I have been in contact with the original author, and he has blessed my helping out. So, we are good to go there.

I understand there are some bugs. Once I get this code posted, and a few people have installed it, we can start working on any remaiing issues such as emails going out to subscribed users when the deadline approaches.

Please understand that a hack like this takes a while to test because the time frame for reoccurring subscriptions to process.

[spence2]

Thank you, Amy, for taking on the development & support of this hack! Also a big thank you to insanctus for the original code and for giving you permission to carry on with it (and to the admins here for adding you on as a supporter).

I'm sure everyone will be glad that you are here.

[Illuvatar]

Thank you amykhar for taking this on! *bows low*

I will go ahead and either compare yours against the orignal or back the original out and then apply yours.

My issue as I listed above is actually not as major as it first appeared, as while it did issue the expiry notification and then went ahead and kept the subscription active in VB AND it left Paypal alone. My only issue now is the expiry notices going out and I'm hoping your changes will sort it for me.

I also have another question. I have the subscriptions set-up to automatically change a member's usergroup to either Silver or Gold for both annual and monthly subs and that works fine. However, I also have custom groups set-up for my mods, admins, etc. that are also subscribers. The subscription works a charm in that as it recurrs it ensures that the user is in the proper usergroup. What I had happen is that the member I mentioned above was reset from Silver Moderator to Silver Subscriber and I really cannot have it de-modding my staff at will. hehe

I decided to just manage those subs via Paypal and manually set the custom usergroups when it's appropriate. This may be my only recourse, but like the Rank deal where many people have asked about having it modified to pick up swecondary usergroups, this might be something to look at as well here.

All I have to do now is get these monthlys recurring properly without sending expiry notices and I will be a happy camper!

[amykhar]

Originally Posted by Illuvatar

Thank you amykhar for taking this on! *bows low*

I will go ahead and either compare yours against the orignal or back the original out and then apply yours.

My issue as I listed above is actually not as major as it first appeared, as while it did issue the expiry notification and then went ahead and kept the subscription active in VB AND it left Paypal alone. My only issue now is the expiry notices going out and I'm hoping your changes will sort it for me.

I also have another question. I have the subscriptions set-up to automatically change a member's usergroup to either Silver or Gold for both annual and monthly subs and that works fine. However, I also have custom groups set-up for my mods, admins, etc. that are also subscribers. The subscription works a charm in that as it recurrs it ensures that the user is in the proper usergroup. What I had happen is that the member I mentioned above was reset from Silver Moderator to Silver Subscriber and I really cannot have it de-modding my staff at will. hehe

I decided to just manage those subs via Paypal and manually set the custom usergroups when it's appropriate. This may be my only recourse, but like the Rank deal where many people have asked about having it modified to pick up swecondary usergroups, this might be something to look at as well here.

All I have to do now is get these monthlys recurring properly without sending expiry notices and I will be a happy camper!

I haven't done anything about the expiration emails yet. At this point, my code simply updates the install instructions for the new version of vbulletin.

As to your other problem, make your gold and silver secondary usergroups. In other words, when your members subscribe, they'll stay in their basic user group, but also be added to gold or silver. This way, your mods and admins don't lose their rank.

[Illuvatar]

Originally Posted by amykhar

I haven't done anything about the expiration emails yet. At this point, my code simply updates the install instructions for the new version of vbulletin.

As to your other problem, make your gold and silver secondary usergroups. In other words, when your members subscribe, they'll stay in their basic user group, but also be added to gold or silver. This way, your mods and admins don't lose their rank.

That's a real good idea and thankyee!

The only issue we would have is that if I make the sub usergroups secondary, then the rank that is assigned to them would not be displayed due to that pesky "primary usergroup only" issue. :ermm:

See...I currently have a rank assigned for all levels of subscriptions so that a pretty Silver or Gold Ring is displayed in the members postbit. Seeing as we're a Lord of the Rings site, having a ring has been a pretty good incentive.

From what I can tell now...if VB would just enable the blasted ranks to work with secondary usergroups, ALL my problems will be solved! lol

And no worries about the expiry emails for now. I too am gratefull that you are taking this on and will wait patiently for the fix. :-)