Paywall or Paid Premium Content

[keithg]

I have not been able to find a suitable Add-on that will allow us to manage premium content only viewable by specific users.

Using user upgrades, user groups and a special forum is too coarse grained for our needs. We desire thread by thread access in a few forum's.

We desire the premium content to be colocated in the same forums as normal content.

Any thoughts or ideas?

 

[S Thomas]

You could achieve this with conditionals in your thread_view template. https://xenforo.com/community/resources/conditional-statements-for-xenforo-2.5795/
However, it would be way cleaner if you actually did this per forum instead of per thread.

 

[Mouth]

We desire the premium content to be colocated in the same forums as normal content.

Why is that? Is it because you feel that if the non-premium users see the threads, but are disallowed its content, that it will entice them to become premium users? If so, I suggest to you that it's the other way around, and the non-premium users will resent that you're locking them out. IMHO, it's better, creating a sense of VIP status to your premium content if you ...

did this per forum instead of per thread.

I also feel that your SEO will be more impacted if you hide mingled content within nodes.

 

[keithg]

After more discussion we will likely do this at a sub-forum level. So the forum is paid.

Any ideas on add-ons to support this?

 

[S Thomas]

Probably something like DragonByte Shop from @DragonByte Tech
Otherwise, you could simply create user group permissions & promotions and change the "no access" message to "buy".

 

[keithg]

Probably something like DragonByte Shop from @DragonByte Tech
Otherwise, you could simply create user group permissions & promotions and change the "no access" message to "buy".

Thanks. I will look into this. We expect to have several hundred different items available for purchase so it needs to be well integrated and easy for the user. That is why we are thinking of a specific buy button for each forum.

 

[Mouth]

create user group permissions & promotions and change the "no access" message to "buy".

Each forum has it's own seperate user group, with each user group having it's own purchasable upgrade.
The "buy" message/button mentioned above, using the same form/link as the 'subscribe/buy' button at /account/upgrades

 

[S Thomas]

Thanks. I will look into this. We expect to have several hundred different items available for purchase so it needs to be well integrated and easy for the user. That is why we are thinking of a specific buy button for each forum.

Not sure, but several hundreds does not sound like a good plan. I'd rather create bundles or flatrates. At the end of the day, what do your Threads even contain? Are these used as resources and not as actual discussions? If so, I would rather look into xenforo resource manager or dragonbyte ecommerce from @DragonByte Tech.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Thanks. I will look into this. We expect to have several hundred different items available for purchase so it needs to be well integrated and easy for the user. That is why we are thinking of a specific buy button for each forum.

If you want the ability to charge people a premium virtual currency to view specific parts of your posts, this could be achieved via DragonByte Credits. it has the ability to setup a "Content" event, which lets you use [CHARGE=X]Post goes here[/CHARGE] to require users to pay a certain amount of virtual currency to see this content.

You could then also set up a "Purchase" event, to sell this premium currency for real money. In XF2, this uses the new Payment Profiles system that user upgrades also uses. In XF1, it's compatible with the [bd] Paygates mod for a similar effect.

The process is slightly convoluted (there isn't a purchase button on the popup asking people to pay for the content), and will be improved upon in future versions for XF2 (the XF1 version is in maintenance mode at the moment), but it still does the job

Other than that, if you are interested in selling digital downloads, which can be a text document you attach to the download, then this can indeed be achieved via DragonByte eCommerce That is, however, completely separate from posts, but does offer way more granular control over every aspect of each individual product you sell (digital or physical).

Hope this helps


Fillip

 

[keithg]

Thanks for the feedback. I will need to do some additional investigation. I an relatively new to Xenforo (I have a Drupal background) and was surprised that there was not a "Paid Premium Content" addon already out there.

In our ideal world a content curator would flag a forum as paid when creating it. They would then populate it with "knowledge content". The forum would be presented as "Paid Content" with a "Buy Now" button that would invoke a purchase process that granted the user access to view the forum content for a specified period of time.

 

[S Thomas]

If it's just about viewing resources, then there are plenty of options out there. Just get rid of the idea of using forums and threads. This is a perfect fit for ecommerce products and resources. There are quite some ecommerce and shop addons here on XF.
Additionally, as mentioned earlier, XF also has everything built-in, you will just need to adjust some templates to fit your needs if you don't want to spent money, but time.

 

[keithg]

Not sure, but several hundreds does not sound like a good plan. I'd rather create bundles or flatrates. At the end of the day, what do your Threads even contain? Are these used as resources and not as actual discussions? If so, I would rather look into xenforo resource manager or dragonbyte ecommerce from @DragonByte Tech.

Thanks for the pointer: I just looked at the Resource Manager and it does not fit our needs, but it gave me a few ideas.

The major direction I have been given is that the paid content areas need to be seamlessly integrated into the normal website discussion content. In simple terms "we want to have paid forums". They will be premium access areas of the normal discussion board. The users will have to pay hard currency in order to gain access to any paid forum.

The RM creates a separate system parallel to the forum thread system. For our needs this is a non-starter from a User Experience perspective.

For anyone reading this, a great example of the Resource Manager in action is the Resources section on this XenForo website!

 

[S Thomas]

Got it. Then either follow @DragonByte Tech's suggestion or use User Upgrades and User Promotions with template edits.