Private Forum for customers

[pawan]

I want to create a private forum for customers only.

What I'm doing currently is that I have set password for that particular forum and give the password to the customers when they buy products from me.

The problem is they have to enter password every time they want to visit the forum.

Other alternative I am thinking of is creating a separate "Customer" usergroup and give access to that group only. This is the perfect solution for me but how to automate it so that I can give customers the instructions for automatically upgrading themselves to "customer" usergroup? I don't want to manually add all the new customers to the usergroup.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Make it a Public Joinable usergroup. If you need to accept join requests before they become active, assign a Group Leader to the usergroup.

[pawan]

It will be difficult to manage if it is public joinable user group as I'll be receiving join requests from "not customer" members as well. I'll have to check my customer database everytime to make sure that they are customers.

Is there anyway so that it can be done fully automatic and I don't have to make my customers wait for the permission?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Then you will need to write a custom script for this as vBulletin has no knowledge of who are your customers.

[PaulSonny]

The only other way I can think of doing it is via vBulletin subscriptions.

Create a subscription for each product you want to sell and then direct your potential customers to the subscription page.

With subscriptions I believe you can grant access to forums and also automatically upgrade there account to another usergroup.

Thanks, Paul.

[org knopper]

I guess itsimple den dat,Just name dat grp something like VIP and go to forum permissions and allow only those usergrps to access dat forum,For all rest make it no n that will do.Hope it helps !

[pawan]

PaulSonny, since my customers will buy product directly from my website there will be no vBulletin involved in that.

So every customers will begin with "Registered User" usergroup. I want something which can make those users automatically upgrade their usergroup to "Customer Usergroup".

Here is what in my mind if its possible:

Step 1: My customer buys product from my website

Step 2: They goto the thank you page of the product and at the same page I give them "UNIQUE CODE" for accessing the private forum

Step 3: When they use the unique code they get automatically added to the customer only usergroup.

Is something like this possible or any hacks for doing that?