Reply To: Review of a trial member upgrading to a paid member

[Joshua Shapiro]

Hi Cristian

first let me explain a bit more about my system

we are not selling the whole novel, we are giving chapters each month of two different novels – unless a person becomes a paid member they don’t see the chapters (along with a special interview each month) which is why we need drip feeding

I was able to setup a reoccuring payment with a ccap — but as I explain below, when a person wants to switch which novel they see, due to an inability to change some fields in the wp database or s2member database – I am not able to do what I want
anyway here is what I discovered:

after doing many test I found out the following things of how s2member pro works which is affecting how I need to setup our membership for the two novels being offered simultaneously – either separately or together

since I am using drip feeding (s2Drip shortcode) – I need to know how many months a person has been a member
to reveal what chapters they see

however when I do a MODIFY Pro Form – if they switch (say novel1 to novel2 or visa versa) there is a field in I think it is called
the wp_meta database that has a date when they became a paid member and this Modify Pro form leaves this date the same
and it is not reset if a person changes their membership via a switch in ccap value or levels

and I was told by Jason that we have no way to change this field (unless you know of a way where I can
change the value of this field with a shortcode or maybe php??

so I have changed my setup to instead of using two ccaps (novel1 and novel2 which is how I originally did it on level2) to make each novel its own level — so this way (because again when I did a modify to switch, the custom capability field then contained both of these ccap values which means this person would get the chapters from both books instead just the new one they switched to …

the only option I have for a person who wishes to switch then since I can’t change the field in wp_meta database that has the date when they first became a paid member is to make a conversion fee based on how long they have been a member (which I can test with a s2Drip shortcode, so they will get X months of the other novel equal to how many months (X) they were receiving the first novel they began to read

I don’t expect many people will want to switch from one novel to another – more they will want to upgrade to both novels which again I would charge a converting fee to take them to the next level

so for example if they received 1 month+ but less then two months of novel 1 and went to novel 2 they would pay the fee for novel 2 plus a one time fee of $5 –

I don’t see any other way to do this unless there is a way to resent this field that has the date that shows when they became a paid member and to begin over to the receiving of chapters for the second novel

also I didn’t see a way how to reset the custom capability field – to take out ccap novel1 and just show novel2 or visa versa

so for the first part of my request for help if you know a way
a) can I reset the date when they become a paid member b) can I blank out of the custom capability field in the user profile?

(if not then the only option I see is to go with an extra fee to switch)

also a semi-related question – I tested canceling a member using a cancel option in a Pro Form, it did cancel the reoccuring fee on paypal but I thought then the person’s level would be changed to level 0 (a free member) but this didn’t happen but I noticed there was an EOT date setup – so does this mean, how s2member pro changes any person, whether their trial membership runs out or they cancel, when the EOT date is exceeded then they are changed to level 0? I need to know this as I am sending out emails based on the EOT date.

2nd question – now I also want to allow people to join who send us a check or money order – obviously we have to do some manual work to setup such a person – what will complicate this, is using drip feed how can I check to see how many months the person has been a member?

my thought was to make a custom capability that saids this is a manual payment, manually change their EOT when their check comes in but do you have any suggestions how I can keep how many months?

my thoughts is to append a new ccap that shows for each month they paid – or can I make a new field in the user’s profile that I can access and check the number of months they are member – like I added to their profile for city – state/province – country but I don’t want the user to see this field?

I used to be a programmer of databases so I am use to making fields to store aspect of a customer that tells me in a program what to do … I don’t know php that well – but there is a friend helping me who if I know how to work with s2member pro we could do this – if this works, it might help other s2member pro users who have people who pay by check in a system that is doing drip feeding

thank you Cristian

Joshua