XF 1.4 Migrating to internal account upgrades...

[Paul]

So - up until now I have taken paypal site "donations" via a 3rd party add-on, and manually upgraded people to a supporter group for the site.

24 months on, i still manually receive and authenticate payments (some people make additional payments when they feel like it!), and add people to a new group. I would like to use the inbuilt "upgrades", to manually add people to a group for a 12 month period.

So, sometimes people wish to make a manual extra payment - This would extend to a maximum of 12 months from the date of the second payment... same with the third etc etc When the 12 months is up, they return to either a "supported" group, or the standard "registered" user.

Could someone advise if this would be possible please?

Also, I need to migrate those existing people. Is there any way i can enter expiry dates when i manually move people over to the inbuilt system??

Many thanks for any suggestions and/or advice

Paul

 

[Paul B]

Once an upgrade has been purchased it can't be purchased again until it has expired.
The only way around that would be to have a very short duration of e.g. 1 day.
You can then manually edit the expiry date.

You can choose whether to add to a new user group or not.

 

[Paul]

Aww rats Means i would need to keep the old system in place to allow for donations.... I was hoping to be able to migrate completely to an internal solution.

Any other way you can think of doing this Paul?

Cheers

 

[Paul B]

It would require an add-on to be able to make payments in that manner.
There may be one available in the resources.

 

[DragonFlames]

Many thanks for any suggestions

Paul,

A suggestion for you... I would setup a set of upgrades afresh, and make them PayPal subscriptions set to renew monthly. You can have one set of these or several depending on how many premium member types you want to have.

You can also setup some extra ones that are PayPal donations so anyone who wants to chip in more can do so.

Once someone then chooses to take up one of these upgrades they will automatically stay on it forever... or at least until they cancel it either via your system or via PayPal.

As each person expires from your current system you could suggest they look at the new system and options and see if that will work for them from now on perhaps...

That's what I would probably do anyway, so I hope the thoughts help in some way. I like to keep everything positive, and I do not ever want to downgrade my members because some donation ran out... the system I suggest above never does that, it only ends things if they decide to stop it.

Because you will be detailing a monthly amount it should look more attractive than making it an annual amount, and it should feel less of a hurdle for people to jump to join up.. knowing they can end things at any time they want to and not be tied into anything for a year or whatever.

Enough ramble.... you could do this many ways including manually trying to do what you do now and so on and it is totally up to you what you feel best.

Steve

 

[Paul]

Ahha... how about....

One account upgrade for a "subscription" upgrade.... and another for "contributions" with duration 1 day - however it upgrades to the same group - would that work??

 

[Paul B]

That's what I do.

 

[Paul]

Can the amounts be variable i.e. people donate what they want, however as long as it's over £1 then thats ok?

ooh sounds like this might just work!!

 

[Paul B]

No, account upgrades are fixed prices.

 

[DragonFlames]

One account upgrade for a "subscription" upgrade.... and another for "contributions" with duration 1 day

I have three types of premium membership, the normal one, one at twice the cost that includes free meals at member meets, and one at three times the cost that says it is for people with money to spare who simply want to help more.

I also have a range of donation options and have those set from something like £20 to £500 so folks can click and just donate money if they think that a good idea. Not a lot happens if they do that and it is a one off thing and just up to them if they want to donate something to be helpful. I think the setting I use is called permanent and it doesn't seem to need to change anything or be for 1 day or anything if set that way.

My main aim is to make it all very positive and pleasant, and simple to understand, use, and control. We aim to be totally non profit but the system does help a lot with the costs of things, and makes it possible to do a lot more.

Steve