The Automatic EOT Time appears to be broken

I have just tested this out on a dummy account on my website. I set it as being “s2Member Level 1” with an Automatic EOT Time of 1 April 2012, to emulate a former customer who did not renew his membership a year ago. When such a member logs in now, I *expect* that the first thing that s2Member will do is to recognise that the EOT has expired, and to demote the customer back down to a mere “Subscriber”. But this is evidently not happening.

Is this a bug? Can it be fixed?

Thanks,

– David.

Thanks for reporting this important issue.

I’m not seeing anything here that sounds like a bug. I can confirm that s2Member’s Auto-EOT System is functional on a clean installation of WordPress v3.5 running s2Member v130116. Tested today.

s2Member’s Auto-EOT System is powered by WP Cron. The s2Member Auto-EOT System runs every 15 minutes. I would take a look at this section of your Dashboard and be sure that your EOT Behavior has this option enabled first. If it is, and it’s still not working, you can try setting up a CRON job of your own, by using the instructions provided by s2Member. Please see: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Options -› Automatic EOT Behavior

Please let us know if problems persist :-)

Hi Jason and thanks for directing me to this part of the s2Member configuration. No setting was showing as having been set, so I changed it to the recommended “enable the Auto-EOT System through WP-Cron”. I then waited a while, but previously-expired EOT dates still did not result in people getting demoted. So then I switched it to “I’ll run it with my own Cron Job” and set up the recommended http cron job via my site’s control panel. The cron job ran (as evidenced by the email message that it caused to be sent to me) but there was still no demotion of people who ought get demoted. Is there anything else that you can suggest?

– David.

To add some more details that might be helpful while investigating this issue, manually entering the following into a web browser didn’t cause demotions for people with expired EOTs either:

http://mywebsite/?s2member_auto_eot_system_via_cron=1

Indeed, it isn’t clear that it did anything. The web browser ended up displaying an otherwise blank page.

– David.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

Interesting! Please submit a Dashboard login and I’ll run diagnostics for you.
See: s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Details received. Thank you!

~ Investigating.

Thanks for your patience.

I setup a test account on your installation with Username EOT_Test, at Membership Level #1, and with an EOT Time that was in the past. I then ran the URL provided by s2Member to the Auto-EOT CRON job.
/?s2member_auto_eot_system_via_cron=1

Inspecting the User’s account afterward at this URL:
/wp-admin/user-edit.php?user_id=2711

Indicates the Member was succesfully demoted down to a Free Subscriber, and s2Member notes that.
Demoted by s2Member: Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:22 am UTC

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To add some more details that might be helpful while investigating this issue, manually entering the following into a web browser didn’t cause demotions for people with expired EOTs either:

http://mywebsite/?s2member_auto_eot_system_via_cron=1

Indeed, it isn’t clear that it did anything. The web browser ended up displaying an otherwise blank page.

A CRON job is not supposed to display anything in your web browser.
It’s normal for this file to display a blank page. That doesn’t mean it is not working though.
/?s2member_auto_eot_system_via_cron=1

Please let us know if problems persist :-)

Can you check and see why user_id=4 and user_id=841 (as two examples) were not demoted?

Thanks,

– David.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

Certainly. Investigating now. One moment please.

It appears that because the Auto-EOT System was not enabled from the start on your installation (i.e. you just recently enabled it, it would appear), that you now have a backlog of EOTs that need to occur.

s2Member will certainly process these, but each time the CRON job is fired (it should be run every 15 minutes), s2Member will process at most, 3 EOTs at a time.

So if you setup the CRON job and let it run periodically, these accounts that you mentioned will be demoted by s2Member eventually; as s2Member goes through the backlog of EOTs that need to occur.

I just ran it again manually, and it picked up User ID 841 and demoted them. User ID #4 is still awaiting EOT.

It is also possible to extend the per-process setting, by filtering this default value of 3.

Please create this directory and file:
/wp-content/mu-plugins/s2-hacks.php
(NOTE: these are MUST USE plugins, see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins)
(See also: http://www.s2member.com/kb/hacking-s2member/)

Aha, the “at most 3 EOTs at a time,” coupled with the large number of EOTs that were in need of being processed, were fooling me into thinking that the EOT system wasn’t working.

Thanks for helping me to get this worked out!

– David.