Subscription Plugin Request

[zach97]

Forgive me if something like this exists already, but I need help.

I am currently creating a Proboards forum for a local community in my town. They want to create a "Twitter Blue" style of subscription service to finance the website. 

The plugin features:

• A simple "Subscribe" tab in the navigation bar at the top of the page (global).
• The ability for users to sign up to a monthly subscription.
  
• Registering for the subscription will upgrade the user's account to a higher level. Cancelling the subscription will demote the user back to the default level.
  
• In terms of Admin settings, we should be able to set the price of the subscription and choose which member group the user should be upgraded/downgraded to. We should also be able to link a Paypal account (or similar).
  

If something like this exists already, please let me know. If not, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could make this plugin for me. 

[zach97]

Bump

[Kami]

Jan 14, 2023 16:54:38 GMT -8 zach97 said:

Forgive me if something like this exists already, but I need help.

I am currently creating a Proboards forum for a local community in my town. They want to create a "Twitter Blue" style of subscription service to finance the website.

The plugin features:

• A simple "Subscribe" tab in the navigation bar at the top of the page (global).
• The ability for users to sign up to a monthly subscription.
• Registering for the subscription will upgrade the user's account to a higher level. Cancelling the subscription will demote the user back to the default level.
• In terms of Admin settings, we should be able to set the price of the subscription and choose which member group the user should be upgraded/downgraded to. We should also be able to link a Paypal account (or similar).

If something like this exists already, please let me know. If not, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could make this plugin for me. 

I'm not a plugin maker, but I did just want to put down some food for thought here:

My biggest pause is the automatic upgrade / downgrade when purchasing or cancelling the subscription. You cannot use a plugin to automatically send requests to the PB servers, which would be necessary to give them a member group (whether a new one, or downgrading). All requests must be manually, by a person, be submitted, so we couldn't automate this.

There's also additional tech needed here that a plugin (which is just a javascript code with a user interface) could not provide. "Subscribe" has to link to something that leads users to process their payment. That would need to be a third party handling system, like paypal or stripe. There's nothing we could add that would allow y'all to have a secure financial transaction so third party is the only way to go for this. Piggybacking off of needing to use a third party payment system, there's no way to verify that a subscription has been made by a specific user on the forum, as we have no way to link their payment account with their forum account.

While I don't know if someone could technically make this plugin, these limitations (to me) strip the essence of the plugin away, so it doesn't seem like it's a good route to take.

[zach97]

Mar 16, 2023 18:15:25 GMT -8 Kami said:

Jan 14, 2023 16:54:38 GMT -8 zach97 said:

Forgive me if something like this exists already, but I need help.

I am currently creating a Proboards forum for a local community in my town. They want to create a "Twitter Blue" style of subscription service to finance the website.

The plugin features:

• A simple "Subscribe" tab in the navigation bar at the top of the page (global).
• The ability for users to sign up to a monthly subscription.
• Registering for the subscription will upgrade the user's account to a higher level. Cancelling the subscription will demote the user back to the default level.
• In terms of Admin settings, we should be able to set the price of the subscription and choose which member group the user should be upgraded/downgraded to. We should also be able to link a Paypal account (or similar).

If something like this exists already, please let me know. If not, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could make this plugin for me. 

I'm not a plugin maker, but I did just want to put down some food for thought here:

My biggest pause is the automatic upgrade / downgrade when purchasing or cancelling the subscription. You cannot use a plugin to automatically send requests to the PB servers, which would be necessary to give them a member group (whether a new one, or downgrading). All requests must be manually, by a person, be submitted, so we couldn't automate this.

There's also additional tech needed here that a plugin (which is just a javascript code with a user interface) could not provide. "Subscribe" has to link to something that leads users to process their payment. That would need to be a third party handling system, like paypal or stripe. There's nothing we could add that would allow y'all to have a secure financial transaction so third party is the only way to go for this. Piggybacking off of needing to use a third party payment system, there's no way to verify that a subscription has been made by a specific user on the forum, as we have no way to link their payment account with their forum account.

While I don't know if someone could technically make this plugin, these limitations (to me) strip the essence of the plugin away, so it doesn't seem like it's a good route to take.

Thank for the thorough reply, very insightful. I wasn't aware of these limitations. 

In your opinion, what would be a good way to do this? Should we just manually check for payment and manually upgrade/downgrade the users? This community I'm making this site for is very close-knit, they just want a way to make donations easier and a little more fun. 

[Kami]

Mar 19, 2023 16:16:13 GMT -8 zach97 said:

Mar 16, 2023 18:15:25 GMT -8 Kami said:

I'm not a plugin maker, but I did just want to put down some food for thought here:

My biggest pause is the automatic upgrade / downgrade when purchasing or cancelling the subscription. You cannot use a plugin to automatically send requests to the PB servers, which would be necessary to give them a member group (whether a new one, or downgrading). All requests must be manually, by a person, be submitted, so we couldn't automate this.

There's also additional tech needed here that a plugin (which is just a javascript code with a user interface) could not provide. "Subscribe" has to link to something that leads users to process their payment. That would need to be a third party handling system, like paypal or stripe. There's nothing we could add that would allow y'all to have a secure financial transaction so third party is the only way to go for this. Piggybacking off of needing to use a third party payment system, there's no way to verify that a subscription has been made by a specific user on the forum, as we have no way to link their payment account with their forum account.

While I don't know if someone could technically make this plugin, these limitations (to me) strip the essence of the plugin away, so it doesn't seem like it's a good route to take.

Thank for the thorough reply, very insightful. I wasn't aware of these limitations. 

In your opinion, what would be a good way to do this? Should we just manually check for payment and manually upgrade/downgrade the users? This community I'm making this site for is very close-knit, they just want a way to make donations easier and a little more fun. 

If it were me, I would link to the third party site with simple HTML (like [Click here to subscribe]) and then ask for a copy of the receipt from the email associated with the forum account and then manually change their groups.

But tbh that's not really "fun" per se, so I am not sure if that would accomplish what you want. If you had paypal, you could have a donate button and just compare emails between the donates and forum members... but that would also only work if they used the same email (if not you'd have to verify the receipt with my first idea)...

Sorry I can't be more help :(

[Bennett 🚀]

Depending on how (and with whom) you want to accept payments, I think there may be a way to create a "queue" or "todo list" of users who have done some sort of subscription action, whether it be a purchase or a cancellation, and then you can work through that list of users with pending subscription changes all in one place.

This way, you would still have context on the user that did the purchase / cancellation, and then that information could be shown in a list somewhere for admins to verify. Then, clicking on a button in that list could take you to that user's profile directly on the Groups tab which would just be one click to add / remove that user from the group. Then, you can go back to that list and mark that todo item as done.

Unfortunately, that is probably as good as it'll get, since we can't have a script click on those Add/Remove Group links since that is technically invoking a "Forum Request" without the user initiating that click themselves.