Access levels

[treehugger]

Ok I'm ALMOST ready to start charging and am pondering access levels. The plan is to leave our current members as Free Member, have all new members as Trial Member where they have limited access until they Update to Paid Member. How can we ensure that all new members go into the Trial Member group on joining please?

[maverick]

You say you want to keep your present members as "free members" and then you want to create a "trial membership" which they are upgraded to a "paid membership" once they pay, does this mean you're going to have 3 membership levels? Sounds a bit confusing to me.

Why don't you just have 2 membership levels, Free and Paid (or premium), then upgrade the members you have now to a Paid level. If you don't know how to create a script to update them all at once to a paid level in your database contact Dan and have him do it for you. You'll also have to decide how long you want their paid membership to last for, forever or for a specific time such as one year.

The system has a free (or basic) membership which is the default membership assigned to all members when they initially sign up. To create another level such as "trial" and then try to make it as the default for new registrants might be complicated to do. IMO the easiest thing to do is simply upgrade the members you have now.

[treehugger]

Thanks for your reply Maverick. I'm not sure I'm understanding this right - are you saying that our 'old' members can be put in the Paid access level and not be automatically reminded that they need to pay every month but our 'new' paid members in the same access level will be?

[maverick]

If you were to upgrade all of your present Free members to the Paid level and you also set it so the term of their membership never expires, then they will never receive a notice to upgrade. You typically set how many days a membership is good for, the setting for a membership to never expire is "0".

[admin2]

Maverick is right. You first create the paid and free memberships (both with no restrictions) then you go (in admin panel) to search all and on top of the search you have this select box: with selected members/all members found (and select the latter)....assign membership..."paid" for 0 days (unlimited).

Then you edit the free membership to add any restrictions you want.

[treehugger]

Thank you gentlemen. 

One (hopefully) last question. Is there a page in the system that a member will be taken to after they have paid via Paypal or do I need to create one?

[treehugger]

Doh! I've found thankyou_subscr_0k.html and have added Your transaction has been completed, and a receipt for your purchase has been emailed to you. You may log into your account at www.paypal.com/uk to view details of this transaction. into the text to comply with Paypal rules.

Now I'm going to sign up as a new member and see if I can pay - I might well be back!

[admin2]

That one, indeed. Did you setup everything in your paypal account as per instructions in the wiki?

[treehugger]

Err - yes Sir. Just checked again to make sure!

So Paypal should be working fine - but once again I've messed up with the blinking index page again! Have emailed you.

[treehugger]

Yay! Who needs the cavalry when we've got Dan.    Working great again - thank you.