We've got aMember running with a forum (invision power board). When people pay and register they are moved to 'members' where their 1 year (or whatever) subscription resides and begins it's countdown. We would like to manually move some members to a premium level above 'members'. We want to do this free of charge and be able to upgrade/downgrade them whenever we want. But we want the premium level to maintain the duration of their paid subscription. What's the best way of handling this? I'd assume if I just move them to a different member group level in the forum that it won't maintain that subscription duration and downgrade them back to 'validating' or whatever when their sub runs out.... Thank you for any insight on this : )
You can add all people in a certain product to a new product using the "mass subscribe" option under products, this will give all of them an end date of the same date. To set them to have a product with an end date that matches their current end date- only thing i can think of is a mysql query. To downgrade them however- you will need to manually do it, member by member, or use a mysql query. David
Thanks for the reply! I don't want to upgrade a bunch of members all at once. I want to upgrade them at different points to this higher level of membership but have it retain their own individual paid duration of their membership. I'm not using this for moderators at all but here is an example. You have a member that you decide upgraded to a moderator status. At the same time you want your moderator to continue paying for their membership as they have been and if you downgrade them back to a member level then you still want it to retain the original membership expiration date. Does that make sense? Thanks!
We are launching today and we'll need to be able to do this somehow. I'm really praying someone will have an answer for me on how to achieve this... Thanks so much everybody!
Sounds like you will manually need to add a new level to the user account, and change the expire date manually too. You arent clear on who you are choosing to upgrade- sounds like you are not doing it for all members- or you could use the "add additional product" setting. David
It's a photography critique forum so we are upgrading handpicked members to 'mentor' status and they will have additional special access areas to the forums etc. I guess changing the actual expiration date in aMember wouldn't be a big deal. I'm just curious if I will be upgrading their usergroup in aMember or if I should be doing it via the forum. I'd think I need to do it in aMember right? Operating everything through aMember is totally foreign to me...
these users should be handled by aMember as well. Create new product in aMember CP that will not be visible on signup/membership renewal pages and assign that product to "mentor" Invision group. \ Then add subscriptions to users manually.
Well, I can't wrap my head around this : ( Where you manage the members accounts and add/remove products... it would be helpful if there was an option to give the member access to 'this additional member access (mentor in my case)' as long as they have a current subscription. Otherwise I have no problems manually adding the 'mentor' product but the problem is when the mentor subscription expires. What if they only have a '1 month' subscription. Then the mentor part will expire and the member access renewed from paypal. I won't know that to re-upgrade them and even if I did I would constantly have to re-upgrade the same person. So then I thought maybe I could create duplicate subscriptions for each product including the pricing (so '1 month membership' is duplicated to 'mentor 1 month membership') and have it be hidden to everybody. Then each time we want to upgrade a member to the 'mentor' status we can add that subscription manually to match the original expiration dates. Once that new sub is added we can delete the original subscription completely. Then everything maintains the same pricing and is current etc. Problem with this is I believe it would delete their paypal records which would mess up their renewals right? Or is that the way to go? Thanks!
Yeah, I just tried that it does have it's issues. If I 'hide' the subscription type then the mentor members can't change the duration of their renewals or anything as they can't see the renewal types. I suppose that could be solved IF they had an option to allow Mentors to see their own hidden sub options as they are already members to it.
Ok, so here is what would be perfect. I can't get the attachments to work so here is a link. Sorry... http://bluevisionweb.com/aMember2.jpg Or, if this is the wrong place then how about a custom field added to the custom field list? In the same exact fashion but not edible by the user. Only admin. Is there any easier existing ways to handle this that anyone can think of? Or could I pay somebody to customize the aMember code to do these things so that it's easier for us to handle? Please advise... Thanks!
Check this aMember CP -> manage products -> Edit product -> Price group. So, create two products for example: 1 month membership assigned to registered group in invision 1 month mentor membership. assigned to mentor group in invision Set price group of second product to -1 That product will nto be available on default signup page and will be available only if user will use special link: /amember/signup.php?price_group=-1 The same will work for renewals as well: /amember/member.php?price_group=-1&tab=add_renew So you just will need to give above links to your mentor members for signup/renewal.
Thank you, sounds promising. I'm gonna check this out. If we downgrade the user back to 'member' status from 'mentor' then will they still be able to purchase that membership since we gave them the special link? Or is there something that prevents that? Thanks!
Is there any other solution to this. I still haven't done it as I just think it's gonna get messy. I need to be able to upgrade/downgrade access levels without changing their subscription itself. So if I want to upgrade them to mentor, top contributer, moderator, whatever... I need to be able to upgrade/downgrade this stuff without different renewal links or payment plans etc. It seems like such a simple thing that I can't believe such complex software can't seem to do. If there is any other ideas then please let me know. Or if there are people who can mod it then I'd be glad to pay. i just need this to work as we need it. What happens if we upgrade the access levels in Invision Power Board alone? Say Members>Mentors. Will aMember continue considering them a 'Member' and then just downgrade them to 'validating' if their membership runs out? Then if they pay it upgrades them to 'member' status again and they can contact us to be re-upgraded manually by us to 'mentors'? Can that happen and is that how it works maybe? Thanks and sorry if what we want sounds so crazy. It's basic functionality of a forum to upgrade/downgrade however you want so it's nice if the membership software doesn't block that functionality but rather works with it
Hi, If you will change user's group in Invision, plugin will reset it next time when user will renewed or when hist profile will be changed. Plugin calculate groups itself and will remove groups that user don't have (per amember products) As I understood both your products Mentor and regular have the same terms? If so, just create one product for membership, and create free product for Mentor membership(this product should be hidden from all). Then when you need to assign existing user to mentor group just add Mentor product to user's account, he will be assigned to both groups Registered and mentor in Invision. Then when you decide to remove that additional group from user's account, remove Mentor product subscription.
Hey Alexander! Well, that sounds like exactly what I'm trying to do. But then once their paid 'member' subscription runs out, won't they still have access because of the free product in there? I need their full access cut-off or brought down to 'validating' once their member sub runs out. Does that make sense? Basicly your solution sounds like it will work perfectly IF it cuts the member off from forum access once their paid portion of the subscription runs out. Otherwise they would get free access until we notice it and that would not be cool as we may never notice it...
any feedback on my last comment? I'd really love to start upgrading my members. They have all been waiting patiently but I want to be sure I do it right before I do it...
Well this can be done as very simple customization. Contact me at alexander@cgi-central.net and provide access info I will implement this.