I'm working with an educational website where they want to send emails to users each day with the lesson plan. The user, however, may sign up one day and not begin studying for a week to several months. Is it possible to all the user select the start date of receiving the emails? Can't seem to find it out of the box, was considering a custom field or perhaps setting the start date of the membership to future somehow? Any ideas?
Hello, Maybe you provide an activate link either in the members area or thru the signup email, so that when they select the link (it would point to a php page in aMember) that would start the email responder with the lessons. Sounds alot like the incremental content plugin except instead of links in the members area, the user is emailed the links? I have no experience with the incremental content plugin so maybe I'm talking out of my *ss. I don't know there target audience but I think if I was a customer of their education plan I don't know if I want to be hit with new emails with lessons every day. I would prefer to receive new lessons once I have somehow indicated that I have completed the previous lesson. Maybe this is not an option for them. Jimmy
Thanks for the reply. The frequency is based on a set study schedule, say 4 week study schedule with set tasks each day during the schedule. Most systems (Amember, Moodle, etc) are either based on set calendar date or set date from registration.. perhaps the notion of sign up now and begin later is a unique edge case.
I would add a field in the amember_members database called substart or something like that, default it to null. Then, on the member page have it check for a value in that field. If there isn't one, give them a link to click that would start their emails by setting the substart to curdate() or now() depending on how they send the emails (cron job based on INTERVAL, etc).
Thank you for the reply. The hope was to use the internal "newsletter" feature in Amember. I try as hard as I can to avoid modifying the core code, but perhaps duplicating the newsletter function to a new function that checks the custom field may be a valid option.
Skip, Here's what I'd do. Sign them up to some sort of area for any pre-course notes etc with a link to another subscription. That link should only be available thru the first subscription area. When they are ready to begin they click that link which subscribes them free of charge to a new product controlled by the Incremental plugin. That subscription would them deliver lessons to them based on the incremental plugin setup. You could have the lessons set to NOT display on members page via the option in the new IC plugin and emails in the 2nd subscription autoresponder giving them the links. In fact if you do it that way come to think of it you dont even need the plugin. You just have the lessons in a set of randomly named directories that are pointed to by the emails. Problem solved