Member Expiration

Hey there,

When we add a new member (who’s paid cash or other means of payment) I can’t see how to set an expiry date. So that they get a reminder to renew. Am I missing it?

On our old system, there was a clear section to amend peoples renewal date. This allowed me to give them an extension, as well.

The old system, also sent custom emails prior to the renewal period and if the payment didn’t go through would suspend there membership.

If this is not an option, what safeguards there are on membership renewal?

How do I add someone and set it to keep them as a member for 1 month, 1 year or forever?

Chris

Hi Chris,

When you manually create a member, you can set the Automatic EOT Time field with a date/time to specify when the account should expire:

EOT = End Of Term. ( i.e. Account Expiration / Termination. ).

If you leave this empty, s2Member will configure an EOT Time automatically, based on the paid Subscription associated with this account. In other words, if a paid Subscription expires, is cancelled, terminated, refunded, reversed, or charged back to you; s2Member will deal with the EOT automatically.

That being said, if you would rather take control over this, you can. If you type in a date manually, s2Member will obey the Auto-EOT Time that you’ve given, no matter what. In other words, you can force certain Members to expire automatically, at a time that you specify. s2Member will obey.

Valid formats for Automatic EOT Time:

mm/dd/yyyy
yyyy-mm-dd
+1 year
+2 weeks
+2 months
+10 minutes
next thursday
tomorrow
today

* anything compatible with PHP’s strtotime() function.

For manually created users, their account will never expire if you leave the field blank.

For members who signed up with a configured payment gateway, the field will remain blank until s2Member receives an IPN message from the payment gateway indicating that their account should expire (for example upon cancellation, payment failure, etc.; s2Member takes care of calculating the EOT time when you’re using a payment gateway).

s2Member does not currently have a system for sending email notifications prior to expiration or when a renewal is due, however we’re addressing that functionality in the next major release of the plugin.

“s2Member does not currently have a system for sending email notifications prior to expiration or when a renewal is due”

Are you serious? You have a paid membership plugin that doesn’t remind people to renew.
My client is going to go absolutely mental when I tell her this. This is such a basic feature for ensuring continuing sales, I am shocked, and incredibly let down.

How will this be fixed in the next version?
Chris

Generally the Gateway I thought handles all this. Or you can use a service that a lot of people use called Speedly. I found the service from another WP shopping cart/membership plugin I’ve purchased. I don’t know how this would work w/ the s2, but from what I’ve notice, s2 works pretty much w/ any other functional plugin.

http://spreedly.com/

Hope this helps as your feature may require additional plugins too.

Hi Chris,

I can understand the desire for such a feature and as I mentioned we’re working to support that functionality in the next major release of the plugin. Currently, renewal or payment failure notifications are handled by the payment gateway (e.g., PayPal sends a reminder to the subscriber notifying them of renewal, expired credit card, failed payment, etc.).

When will the next major version be released?

Another question from my client:

Can we give free extensions? For example, a girl has been sick, so I gave her a free extension, how to I manage this without involving PayPal? (I’d be very surprised if there is not something in place for this… after all this is why people have switched to online membership software – to help manage all of this)

So far, your software is serving her a lot less well than what we switched from. Disappointing indeed!

Hi Kelly.

You can edit the EOT time manually from the user’s profile, if you need to. If there was a time already set, then just edit it to add the time you want to give her. If she has a paid subscription, then there won’t be an time set for EOT until the subscription ends, so what you can do instead is refund one of the payments you received, or part of it.

I hope that helps.

I agree, the email feature would really be needed.

Most plugins can send a custom letter at EOT as well, so I can write the ex-subscribers a bye-bye letter.

I would also like to be able to send a different emails on sign up, based on the purchased membership level. At the moment I solve this by directing them to a page on the site, which shows them content based on their membership level, but the email version would be much better.

Hello, I have a question related to this topic : how do I do if I want a permanent membership for some users I created, with no expiration (example: they have a level2 status) ? I’ve understood it is possible to manually configure the EOT. Anyway, is there a specific code to put in the field to do that?
Allen, from France

Tamas, you can already edit the email that gets sent to new users on registration and new customers on sign up. ;)

Knowledge Base » Editing the New User Email Notification with s2Member®
[hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Signup Confirmation Email[/hilite]

Allen, for the membership to be permanent, just don’t set a term or EOT time. And if someone already has an EOT time, you can simply remove it manually from their profile page.

Thanks Cristian, it was more simple than I thought :-)

I have another question : there are 2 urls for the projet I’m currently working on :
– the final url of the final website
– a testing url of a ‘sandbox’ website which allow me to test upgrades, translations, etc…
(I can send you the 2 urls in a private message)
Is it possible to add a pro licence for the second one (sandbox) without buying another licence?

Cristián, thanks, but what I’m talking about is sending out differing signup confirmation emails based on which membership the customer buys.

As far as I know, the present method which you mention does not allow for that, other than replacing a few variables of course.

Tamas, sorry I didn’t understand earlier. This forum conversation may help you with that: http://www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10368

Allen, it’s OK as long as you only use it in one live site, your testing installation is not counted.

So, in summary:

1. For people who pay through a gateway, there is no auto-AOT filled in, so you can’t supplement their membership or extend it. Is there going to be any resolution to this?

2. When will the next version be released, with a better messaging setup?

Bless,
Chris

Kelly, I don’t have a date fo the next major release, sorry.

The EOT time is set right away on buy-now transactions, but not in subscriptions. Subscriptions will have the EOT set when they end, because they’re still ongoing.

I’ll have to chime in here.

I’m not doing Buy It Now transactions – only recurring.

I created a user who paid daily. I let this run for two days and two payments came through. As a test I canceled this user on 4/22.

Billing profile in PP Sandbox delivered the message successfully that the profile was canceled and no further funds have been deposited.

However, within WP, the user still has not been demoted and it’s now 4/24. I was under the impression that there’s a 1 day buffer before demotion.

There’s nothing in the EOT field for this user’s profile.

Not using a caching plugin.

I am using the hack provided to set level2 as the demotion level.

Should I be adjusting the user level manually for each or adding a date into that field?

Thank you.

It could be the sandbox. Could you try it with a real transaction, even if for a cent?