How To Setup Trial Memberships For New Members

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  • Jake Bunce
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2000
    • 46598
    • 3.6.x

    How To Setup Trial Memberships For New Members

    These instructions will setup trial access to your forum such that new users must purchase a subscription within X days or they will lose their access. At the end of X days they will still be in the Registered Users group which will qualify them for the promotion (demotion) into the expired group.

    Note that we are using the default Registered Users group as the trial group since that is where new registrations go. Then we are either demoting back to an expired group at the end of X days or subscribing to a subscriber group.

    Create a new group for expired trials
    Create the new group in your:

    Admin CP -> Usergroups -> Add New Usergroup

    When setting the permissions on the Add New Usergroup page, set all permissions to No except for the Can View Forum permission. This way the expired trial can still access their:

    User CP -> Paid Subscriptions

    ...so they can purchase subscriber access after their trial has expired. In the meantime they won't be able to access anything else.

    You may wish to set specific forum permissions for this group:

    Admin CP -> Forums & Moderators -> Forum Permissions

    Create a promotion (demotion) to expire the trials after X days
    Go to your:

    Admin CP -> Usergroups -> Promotions -> Add New Promotion

    Use these settings, where X is the number of days after which trial accounts are expired:
    • Usergroup - Registered Users
    • Reputation Comparison Type - Greater or Equal to
    • Reputation Level - 0
    • Days Registered - X
    • Posts - 0
    • Promotion Strategy - Join Date
    • Promotion Type - Primary Usergroup
    • Move User to Usergroup - the group you created for expired trials

    Create a new group for subscribers
    Go to your:

    Admin CP -> Usergroups -> Add New Usergroup

    Set this group's permissions as appropriate for subscribed members.

    You may wish to set specific forum permissions for this group:

    Admin CP -> Forums & Moderators -> Forum Permissions

    Create a subscription for subscribers to purchase
    Go to your:

    Admin CP -> Paid Subscriptions -> Add New Subscription

    Configure the subscription so it changes a user's primary group to the new group you created for subscribed users. Set whatever prices and lengths you want.

    Extra - notify users of status
    Notify expired trials
    You can let users know that their access has expired by editing this template:

    Admin CP -> Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> « » -> header

    Add this code below the $spacer_open variable, where X is the usergroupid of the expired group. You can change the blue message if you want:

    Code:
    <!-- content table -->
    $spacer_open
    
    [color=red]<if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid'] == [color=blue]X[/color]">
    	<br />
    	<div align="left" style="color: red; background-color: white; border: 1px solid black; padding:2px">[color=blue]Your trial has expired.  Please subscribe <a href="payments.php$session[sessionurl_q]">here</a>.[/color]</div>
    </if>[/color]
    
    $_phpinclude_output
    This will display a highlighted message at the top of your forums for members in the expired group.

    Inform active trials of how long they have left
    You can inform active trials of how long they have left by editing this template:

    Admin CP -> Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> « » -> header

    Add this code below the $spacer_open variable, where X is the number of days until trials expire (scroll right). You can change the blue message to whatever you want, but you need to use $daysleft where you want the number of days to show up:

    Code:
    <!-- content table -->
    $spacer_open
    
    [color=red]<if condition="$bbuserinfo['usergroupid'] == 2">
    	<if condition="$daysleft = (int)(($bbuserinfo[joindate] + [color=blue]X[/color]*86400 - TIMENOW) / 86400)">
    		<br />
    		<div align="left" style="color: red; background-color: white; border: 1px solid black; padding:2px">[color=blue]Your trial access expires in $daysleft days.  You can subscribe <a href="payments.php$session[sessionurl_q]">here</a>.[/color]</div>
    	</if>
    </if>[/color]
    
    $_phpinclude_output
    This will display a highlighted message at the top of your forums for active trials. The message will display the number of days left on the trial.

    FYI - promotion and subscription mechanics
    Both subscription expirations and promotions are handled by scheduled tasks:

    Admin CP -> Scheduled Tasks -> Scheduled Task Manager -> User Promotions and Subscriptions

    By default, promotions run every hour while subscription expirations run once a day. So an expired trial can take up to one hour to change over, and an expired subscription can take up to one day. If you are testing your setup, then you can manually run these tasks to see that the appropriate changes are being made.

    If a user's subscription expires then they will be dropped back to the expired group, either directly or by way of the Registered Users group and the demotion, depending on which group they were in when they purchased the subscription. This process can take time because of the tasks mentioned above.

    edit - added more content to the notify users of status section.
    Last edited by Jake Bunce; Sat 6 May '06, 3:40pm.
  • Jake Bunce
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2000
    • 46598
    • 3.6.x

    #2
    I added instructions to display a message that notifies active trials of how long they have left. This is an important addition so I am bumping the thread.

    Comment

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