We are currently working on a project and planning to use AM. Our current site uses a manual process, i.e. members send payment via Paypal and we create their listings. We keep a diary of renewal dates and send reminders. You can see why we are hoping to use AM!!! So, we're wondering on best practices on how to approach the transition of manual members to the new automated AM system. An idea we have is to create our products as usual and simply give our existing members a coupon which will give them 100% discount. Then, once they have used this, and signed up using AM, we can manually change the date range in their account to the date their renewal is due. Is this the right approach?
Import existing members into amember. When their paypal expires- have then sign up for autocontinuity. David
Thank you David, but that won't be possible for us as we need them to sign up on the new site during their account period. The reason being is that they need to create their profile and listing on the new site. Our new site isn't just a redesign, it's an entirely different beast structurally. I'm thinking the clue for us is to create a specific product that can then be altered once they've signed up, or switch them to a different product and alter the date ranges accordingly?
Might help if you described how you store the information now. Is it possible to create a file containing usernames and passwords, together with other relevant details (emails etc.), and then import this into aMember automatically. This would create your basic users database. Now configure products in aMember as required then all you have left is to manually assign members to respective product complete with expiry dates. This was basically how I upgraded from V3 to V4 as I wanted to change membership structure as well as upgrade and this seemed an ideal way to implement both changes in one go.
As I implied in my first post above, in a hand written diary! Basically, we need members to sign up on the site so that in one go we'll capture their details in order to create an account, and at the same time auto-create them as a user on our WordPress site. During this process we will also be able to get them signed up for our newsletter from within AM, and populate our Mail Chimp account. Once they have created an account and logged in on our WordPress site, they will be able to create their listings. The new version of our website cannot be launched until all existing manual members are signed up to the new site and have created their listings. Then, we plan to manually adjust the expiration of their product to match their anniversary date so that auto-renewals, or at least notifications of impending expiration, kick in. I can see that being very straight-forward in your case, but in our case we're on V0 of Amember
I read the bit about keeping records in a diary but your current website probably doesn't have the facility to look in the diary to see if a visitor has permission to access the site. Once people have paid, and they have been entered in the diary, what do you do next to control access?? Only trying to help but need to extract a bit of information from you as to how you are doing things now (access control) - not just that you use a diary!!
Our current website is an entirely manual process. Members pay to list and we create their listings for them, there's no access control.