Questions before upgrading to full version

Hi there.

I want to make sure S2 Member Pro is right for me.

Here is what I need it to do:

1) I will be offering a one-off registration payment of £50, and yearly subscription of £100 to become a member.
2) A member will be able to book events on the site (using event espresso) and a non-member will be able to see the event page, but not be able to book, and will be prompted to join)
3) There will be a membership form with custom fields, and I need the member data it to be easily exported to excel
4) In the members area, the member should be able to edit the profile, see when their membership expires, and cancel membership (will be using paypal standard subscriptions)
5) If a member cancels, their details should remain on the system, but they shouldn’t be able to log in.
6) If they want to leave membership, and comeback, then there should be a way to renew their membership easily, without having to pay the joining fee again.
7) As its a new venture, want to be able to experiment with the pricing (we will probably change the subsription price over the 1st 6 months, till its right) If a member joins and pays the 1st year at the test price, is there a way to correct the price for his next installment?
8) Also want to be able to offer a special offer for the rest of 2013 – no joining fee – just a subscription. In 2014, all NEW members will have to pay the joining fee

I know these appear to be a lot of requirements, but from what I have seen S2 Member Pro can do this. Most seems to be done via S2 Member Free, but wasn’t to work out how to do: 3, 4 (expiration of profile), 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Would appreciate, if someone can shed light how to go about doing this. S2 Member certainly seems to be capable, but just want to make sure..

Thanks

Thank you for your inquiry. We appreciate your patience. :-)

1) I will be offering a one-off registration payment of £50, and yearly subscription of £100 to become a member.

That’s fine. You’ll want to use a trial amount of 150 euros and a trial period of 1 year. After the trial is over, the regular subscription will start at 100 euros.

2) A member will be able to book events on the site (using event espresso) and a non-member will be able to see the event page, but not be able to book, and will be prompted to join)

I’m not familiar with Event Espresso, but I don’t see this being an issue. You may need to resort to blocking access to the event page if you’re not familiar with some PHP code, but s2Member definitely has enough options available for you to restrict access to this.

3) There will be a membership form with custom fields, and I need the member data it to be easily exported to excel

s2Member Pro provides support for exportation, and s2Member has Custom Registration/Profile Fields built in.

5) If a member cancels, their details should remain on the system, but they shouldn’t be able to log in.

You can have a User demoted to Subscriber role. But they will still be able to log in. They will, however, not be able to access anything protected at s2Member Level 1. This is to keep Users from registering multiple accounts.

6) If they want to leave membership, and comeback, then there should be a way to renew their membership easily, without having to pay the joining fee again.

You can use s2Member’s Shortcode Conditionals to decide what form s2Member will show a User. If the User is logged in, or s2Member Level 0, they might see the form that allows them to skip the 50 euro fee.

See: Knowledge Base » Simple Shortcode Conditionals

7) As its a new venture, want to be able to experiment with the pricing (we will probably change the subsription price over the 1st 6 months, till its right) If a member joins and pays the 1st year at the test price, is there a way to correct the price for his next installment?

You can have Users cancel their subscription, and have them sign up for the subscription at the new level, but you can’t edit the User’s subscription. Sorry.

8) Also want to be able to offer a special offer for the rest of 2013 – no joining fee – just a subscription. In 2014, all NEW members will have to pay the joining fee

That’s fine. Just change your Pro Form to reflect these changes when you’re ready.

Many thanks!

That was most useful, and certainly think s2 member pro is the way to go!

Just to clarify a couple of things…

1) Can i have different forms (and subscribe button) for the same membership level?

As you suggested, I wanted to show one form for completely new people, and another form for level0 members (without the registration)

2) Can I send automatic reminders when someones membership is due for renewal?

3) Is there a shortcode to show the following info on a page for members: Date of registration, Date of membership expiration

4) If we do increase pricing, how best to do it without inconveniencing members? I don’t want to say that we’ve increased our pricing, please unsubscribe and join again on the join-up page. Is there a way to create a button which unsubscribes the old membership and adds them to a new subscription – or one that upgrades the pricing of membership?

Cheers!

Couple more questions!

5) Can we integrate Groupon with subscription memberships?

6) I’ve created custom profile fields on join up form. Some fields are required, so I’ve set this up. When a user is logged in, he is able to delete the contents of the required field and still able to save. Is this how it should work?

Cheers!

Sorry to bug again, but perhaps this will explain what I need via groupon

Just need to know if its possible or not, or if there is any custom programming needed:

1) There is a one-off joining fee, and a yearly membership fee
2) In 2013, to promote more sales there is no membership fee, just a one-off joining fee..

In 2013, if people but through groupon, they should be able to join the site without needing to go through any checkout (I have seen this is possible through some customisation)

In 2014, if people use groupon, they should be able to register on the site but will checkout, having to pay the membership fee (either full or discounted rate – haven’t decided).

I know there are several requirements outlined in the 3 messages I’ve sent but i hope that S2member can do these, either out of the box, or some basic PHP programming. And if so, I am happy to go ahead and purchase.

Thaks

1) Can i have different forms (and subscribe button) for the same membership level?

Absoultely. You can make as many different forms as you want, and s2Member can’t tell. s2Member only checks to see if the payment came from an s2Member form (or in the same format as expected from s2Member), and that the subscription is real. You could have one User sign up for $0.01 and one sign up for $999 and s2Member would not care.

2) Can I send automatic reminders when someones membership is due for renewal?

Not by default. I did write a little extension for s2Member that makes this possible for non-recurring subscriptions and Buy-Now transactions. It depends on s2Member setting the End of Term (EOT) date, so it doesn’t work for PayPal recurring subscriptions.

See: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/setting-up-eot-notifications/

3) Is there a shortcode to show the following info on a page for members: Date of registration, Date of membership expiration

You can use the s2Get Shortcode for this.

See: Knowledge Base » Simple Shortcode Conditionals

4) If we do increase pricing, how best to do it without inconveniencing members? I don’t want to say that we’ve increased our pricing, please unsubscribe and join again on the join-up page. Is there a way to create a button which unsubscribes the old membership and adds them to a new subscription – or one that upgrades the pricing of membership?

You can use these:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Buttons -› Subscr. Modification Buttons
or these:
Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Billing Modification Forms

5) Can we integrate Groupon with subscription memberships?

s2Member doesn’t have an integration with Groupon. Sorry.

6) I’ve created custom profile fields on join up form. Some fields are required, so I’ve set this up. When a user is logged in, he is able to delete the contents of the required field and still able to save. Is this how it should work?

I believe s2Member checks for empty responses and saves the old value if it’s empty when you’re using the profile shortcode. Are you using the Shortcode here?

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› API / Scripting -› Member Profile Modifications

1) There is a one-off joining fee, and a yearly membership fee
2) In 2013, to promote more sales there is no membership fee, just a one-off joining fee..

In 2013, if people but through groupon, they should be able to join the site without needing to go through any checkout (I have seen this is possible through some customisation)

In 2014, if people use groupon, they should be able to register on the site but will checkout, having to pay the membership fee (either full or discounted rate – haven’t decided).

s2Member doesn’t have any integrations with Groupon at all, and I’m not familiar with its API. I can tell you that if you do integrate, then you can use the info here to allow Users to sign up without checkout.

See: Knowledge Base » Offering a Free Coupon Code (100% Discount)

Thanks for the replies!

For the profile issue, yes am using the shortcode:

[s2Member-Profile /]

No matter what I change, it always says:
Profile updated successfully.

If i make the field blank, it will come up with the message, yet fill the field with the previous data (so it is not saving the new field anyway).

For the groupon issue. Here is what I assume we need to do:
1) import a coupon code batch that should give 100% discount. We can maintain the coupon codes ourselves if it is easy enough to do
2) Thanks for the link. There it mentions 2 options, and give the solution to the easier option, but mentions it is not so secure as the link can be passed around. It is also likely that a potential hacker can get access to those codes and be able to generate the URLs themselves? How would we know?

If a coupon has been used, how do we prevent it from being used again?

Cheers!

If i make the field blank, it will come up with the message, yet fill the field with the previous data (so it is not saving the new field anyway).

Yes, this is the method s2Member normally takes. This is to prevent an accidental deletion of data, as well as keeping Users from deleting required fields.

For the groupon issue. Here is what I assume we need to do:
1) import a coupon code batch that should give 100% discount. We can maintain the coupon codes ourselves if it is easy enough to do
2) Thanks for the link. There it mentions 2 options, and give the solution to the easier option, but mentions it is not so secure as the link can be passed around. It is also likely that a potential hacker can get access to those codes and be able to generate the URLs themselves? How would we know?

It is as insecure as having a coupon in your Pro Form that is usable by anyone. It accomplishes the same thing, as if you create a coupon it will be available to anyone as well.

If a coupon has been used, how do we prevent it from being used again?

s2Member doesn’t have this capability built in. It instead uses time-based coupon expiration. I’ve already talked with our development team about adding the capability to only have a coupon usable so many times, but we’re focused on working on the next major version of s2Member first. In this version we’ll work on this functionality later. In the mean time (for your free registration coupon code), you’ll have to have a database entry that tracks your used coupons, and disables coupons after they are used.