Ready to go pro …just 2 questions

Hi,

s2member looks great. I need it to do one of two specific things however.

1. I want to allow people sign up for my training course with all members starting on the same date. (How) Can I set a start date so that access/content dripping does not begin until a preset date?

2. I also would like to know what’s involved in setting up custom fields for admin users. The reason for this is that I want to be able to specify a URL for a buddypress group which will be used to dynamically populate a menu item – so that all classmates have a link to their class group in their main menu. In other words, I want add a custom text box in the admin area which associates a new custom field with each new member. When I update the custom field, all new members will get the updated URL. Is this difficult to do?

3. Finally, I currently use DAP for my membership. When I switch over to s2member will my old members be able to login?

Thanks in advance,
Brian

• This topic was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by  brian duffy.

Hi Brian,

Please see my replies below:

1. I want to allow people sign up for my training course with all members starting on the same date. (How) Can I set a start date so that access/content dripping does not begin until a preset date?

If you’re dripping content and you simply want to prevent everybody from seeing the content until a specific date, regardless of when they signed up, you can make that part of your Content Dripping conditional. You can use some PHP code to write a conditional that says “If the date is after January 1st, 2012, show the content, otherwise show this message”.

If you want payments to begin on a specific date, that’s a bit more tricky and is largely dependent on the features of the payment gateway. PayPal, for example, lets you specify “Trial Periods”, however those trial periods cannot be free — they must cost at least $0.01. (If they could be free, you could simply use PHP to dynamically set a trial period that lasts up until January 1st, after which the recurring payments start.)

If you’re OK charging something for that initial trial period, then you can use that Initial/Trial period feature. Otherwise, you’ll need to let your users subscribe as free subscribers and then present them with a Billing Modification form (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Billing Modification Forms) to upgrade to the paid plan.

2. I also would like to know what’s involved in setting up custom fields for admin users. The reason for this is that I want to be able to specify a URL for a buddypress group which will be used to dynamically populate a menu item – so that all classmates have a link to their class group in their main menu. In other words, I want add a custom text box in the admin area which associates a new custom field with each new member. When I update the custom field, all new members will get the updated URL. Is this difficult to do?

s2Member has the Custom Registration Fields feature (Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Registration/Profile Fields) which allows you to create a Custom Registration/Profile field for all the users, however there’s no feature that allow you to modify the content of that field across all users in one go — you’d need to edit the users manually and update the field (or you could use the Import/Export feature of s2Member Pro and export all the users, update the field, and then reimport them all).

For what you’re trying to do, it sounds like having a programmer create a plugin that does exactly what you want with the fields is going to be your best bet.

3. Finally, I currently use DAP for my membership. When I switch over to s2member will my old members be able to login?

That will largely depend on how DAP stores user information. If all DAP members are WordPress users, then the migration should be straightforward because s2Member also uses the WordPress user base. However, if DAP stores users in their own way, outside the WordPress user base, then you’ll need to export the DAP users, build an import file that is compatible with s2Member, and then import all the users into s2Member.

Please see How to Migrate to s2Member Pro from Other Software for more information.

Hi Raam,

Thanks for the response. You have answered everything nicely! :)

Can I just clarify something…

When I have a full class it goes ahead and the content starts dripping from the specified start date.

While the course is underway I am then signing up students for the next course. Students who sign up while a course is running will have to wait for the new start date. (How) Can this be done using s2member?

Thanks again,
Brian

There is a hack that my developer coded and it is called Ccap Drip Timer. In that particular code, it will drip the content based on the time of transaction (instead of the time of registration, which can differ). The complete hack includes a snippet that will set a timestamp to the transaction, but you can probably emulate that and instead of using the timestamp at the time of transaction, you can assign a set ccap that will be the first day of the course. That way, if the course starts on January 5, then you would assign the “timestamp” as if the member made the transaction on that day (so everyone registering until then would have the same “timestamp”) and the dripped content would only start on that day.

Then, if you take on registrations for the next course starting on March 10, as soon as the January course starts, you change the “timestamp” to the one for March 10, and so on.

There is a little bit more information on this post:
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/ccap-drip-timer-drip-multiple-courses/
This will also allow you to drip content on several courses simultaneously, even if they are all on Level 1.

Thanks cassel,

It sounds a little complicated tbh for where Im at currently with s2member – which is the very beginning.

Is there a danger that a later version of s2member might break this hack??

No danger. The hack is just something you would have to copy. It has all the instructions. I am not a coder either and i can use it. The hack is set in a different file that would not be overwritten by any upgrade, and the ccap is used just like any other ccap in s2M.

My explanation might sound complicated, but it really isn’t! I swear!

Thanks again Cassel. One last question…

I will be using mail chimp to send out weekly emails for course participants. Is it possible to sync mail chimp with the start date for a product – so that emails don’t start getting sent out until the predefined start date when the content starts dripping?

How does that work?

Thanks again for all the help so far

At this point, the hack is not automatically synched with MC. I have not asked my developper for it because in my case, i have a small enough number of members that i can manually enter the date i need for content dripping. I also have emails sent weekly based on the date of the start. I enter the date manually for now (but that synch is on the to do list for the developper) so you could do the same in the mean time and enter the start of the course at whatever date you want. Since you dont need to be exact on the date of the registration (you can enter the date of January 5th to all the new registrants until then, so you can enter that manually once a week and it wont affect the start of the course)

There is also a plugin he developed to synch MC and s2M so that anyone making changes to email in MC will get the same changes in s2M.
http://krumch.com/2012/08/24/kc-bidirectional-integration-of-s2member-with-mailchimp/

If my explanation seems complicated, it is not. Just ask and i will re-explain it, no problem!