Bypass Sign-Up Confirm Email Registration?

I am having problems with my sign-up confirmation emails going to SPAM folders or paying members just no seeing them – who knows, but people aren’t using them to create their accounts after paying for the account. Eventually I have to generate a new Member Registration Access Link. It is getting really annoying since the site is growing really fast. Is there a way to bypass this and have new paying members redirected to the access link? I am using CCBill as my merchant gateway. I altered the approval url to the registration url, but the account was not linked to the paid subscriber ID, it just created a free account. Please help!!

Thank you for your inquiry.

Currently there’s no way to forward Users to registration immediately after payment with ccBill that I’m aware of. I do know that something that will sometimes help with keeping emails from going to spam is having your hosting provider enable SendMail if it is not already enabled. SendMail sends signed emails, which usually are not blocked.

That’s really unfortunate. I will look into SendMail, but you would think it would be a simple fix and a much requested feature in order to avoid multiple emails and confusion on the user’s end.

For the redirection, maybe you can add some JavaScript to the return page template to forward the user to the registration page. I haven’t tested this, but you may want to try it. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› ccBill® Options -› Approval/Denial URLs -> Optional customizations[/hilite]

About Signup Confirmation emails going to spam, one thing that may help is writing your own template for it and not use the default one, so it’s different to any other site’s that may have been marked as spam and added to filters. Write your own, making sure it doesn’t raise any spam flags, and see if it helps. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› ccBill® Options -› Signup Confirmation Email[/hilite]

I attempted the optional customization and tested it. It didn’t work. The user was able to create an account, but it did not link to the payment gateway so he had a free account without full access. PayPal uses a ProForm, there has to be a way to integrate this method with CCBill so the customer is not having to look for an email to register.

I attempted the optional customization and tested it. It didn’t work.

Did you review your s2Member logs? [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Log Files (Debug) -› s2Member® Log Viewer[/hilite]

What do they say for this test transaction you did? Any errors? You can send your site’s info so I take a look at your log files there. Let me know when you sent it, please. s2Member® » Private Contact Form

If you have logging disabled, please enable it, and run a new test transaction so it gets logged. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Log Files (Debug) -› Logging Configuration[/hilite]

The user was able to create an account, but it did not link to the payment gateway so he had a free account without full access.

If there was any problem with the checkout, then the signup email may not have been sent and the s2Member cookie not have been set. If there’s no cookie or special registration link, s2Member won’t know that the account being registered is not a free one or the subscription information.

You probably have Open Registration enabled or the user would not have been able to register at all without the s2Member cookie/link. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Open Registration[/hilite]

PayPal uses a ProForm, there has to be a way to integrate this method with CCBill so the customer is not having to look for an email to register.

There aren’t pro-forms for the ccBill integration. Also, in case you’re trying to use the free registration pro-form, just know that it won’t pay attention to the cookie s2Member sets to have the payment info on registration. Use the standard WP registration form, please.

What do they say for this test transaction you did? Any errors? You can send your site’s info so I take a look at your log files there. Let me know when you sent it, please. s2Member® » Private Contact Form

If you have logging disabled, please enable it, and run a new test transaction so it gets logged. Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Log Files (Debug) -› Logging Configuration

There were no errors to my knowledge. I had open reg enabled. I reran all the tests w/ & w/o open reg. The open reg allows reg but does not link to purchase. I sent you the info so you can look at the log.

Thanks for the login info. Got the email.

I didn’t see errors in the logs, and the IPN log says the Signup Confirmation email is being sent fine, although I don’t see a mention of the cookie.

5 => ‘Signup Confirmation Email sent to: “test test” ; “Admin” .’,

If after checkout the s2Member return page says that he should check his email, then he should, or he’ll risk not having the account set at the right level. Do you normally have free registration enabled or you just did recently for testing?

Anyway, I’ll ask Jason about the cookie and not depending on the link in the email for paid registrations. I’m not sure under what situations with ccBill it’d be like that.

There haven’t been any errors that I’ve noticed either.

If after checkout the s2Member return page says that he should check his email, then he should, or he’ll risk not having the account set at the right level. Do you normally have free registration enabled or you just did recently for testing?

I understand that it says that. I put that there so that people would check their email, but, of course, most don’t even read it. The whole point is that I want to eliminate the email so they can just do it right after paying. I have free reg enabled because the forum is free so they can register that way to post.

Anyway, I’ll ask Jason about the cookie and not depending on the link in the email for paid registrations. I’m not sure under what situations with ccBill it’d be like that.

Sounds good. Let me know. Thanks for looking through the info.

This is what he told me:

Jason said:

This has come up in the past and it continues to be a problem of sorts.

Unfortunately, ccBill does not provide any immediate response to s2Member after checkout. There is no Auto-Return functionality provided by ccBill. The only way s2Member can accurately verify the transaction is to await the IPN communication from ccBill which occurs behind-the-scene (e.g. ccBill® Background Post Integration).

A possible solution to this problem where Open Registration is enabled, is to use a custom Thank-You page to state clearly what the customer should do. s2Member does this by default already, but if he’s having problems, he could use a custom Thank-You page with ccBill and elaborate further to help prevent customers from taking the wrong route to registration.

The default Thank-You page (i.e. ccBill® Approval URL) looks like this:
http://www.example.com/?s2member_pro_ccbill_return=1

But you can use whatever URL you prefer instead. So if you setup a custom Thank-You page of your own, you can swap out the default s2Member handler with your own. Siince this URL does nothing after checkout (other than display a message to the customer), there is no harm in changing it to whatever you like best.

See also: [hilite path]s2Member -› ccBill Options -› ccBill® Approval/Denial URLs[/hilite]

Another thing that you may try, that I just thought, is only sell the paid membership to those already logged in to their free account. This way the purchase will upgrade the existing account and you’ll avoid the issue you’re having.

Grrr, I thought it might be something like that. Tell Jason thank you for the response. I’ve thought about doing the free account sign-up, but I’d have to reroute all the sign-up links. I don’t really have time to do that. I’ll keep it in the back of my head though. I did make the Thank You page custom so hopefully that will direct people, but usually they just want the content and don’t read what the instructions are. Thanks for all the help.

No problem. And I know what you mean.

Anyway, the best solution I can think is having them register and login before purchase, but I can understand you may need to update a bunch of things for that.