Need a mod

[MrFurious]

First and foremost, I'm an idiot when it comes to anything beyond HTML coding so I'm looking for someone who would be interested in making a custom mod for me.  The mod is one I think a lot of the higher traffic forums would be interested in.

What I'm looking for is a way to force forum users to purchase memberships after a specific number of posts (say 25 for example).  After registering they would be able to do everything a paying member would until they made their 25th post.  The next time they'd try to post or reply they would be directed to a specified webpage that would outline that their free trial period is over and they need to purchase a 1-year membership to continue using the forum.

The best way I can think of to accomplish this would be to use the membergroup permissions.  Essentially add another setting to the list of each membergroup asking if it's a membership or trial period membergroup.  To greatly lesson the number of requests going to the database, I'd also like a cookie file generated that would remember if that person is a paying member or not for 30-days.

The part I have no clue how one would setup is how to handle members whos membership lapses.  Naturally I would have a special usergroup in place for these people, but I don't want to have to manually go in and change each and every one of them.  I do that now and it's a PITA every month.  As such, if there were a field to enter the date they became a paying member, a simple script would be written to change their primary membergroup after 365 days.  Then when payment is received again, it would be a simply matter of my going in and resetting their primary membergroup and payment date.

Last but not least, I definitely want the mod to be very admin (read as idiot) friendly.  That means a package install, easy to configure in the admin panel, and no custom coding required anywhere (a setup similar to SMF Ads would be ideal).

Right now I'm simply using PayPal's donation and subscription options to accept site support from my members and it's not integrated into the forum software in any way or form.  I'm not sure if it's possible, but having it built into the forum would be a nice touch, and you could even add the option for credit card transactions if the person utilizing it has an online merchants account.

Anyway, that's a very rough description of what I'm looking for in a mod.  It's a lot to ask for, but I have a feeling if it were available a lot of people would be interested in it.  We all fork out a good amount of money to host our forums, so having a way to require that our members help cover part of that cost within the software would be real nice.

[vbgamer45]

Check ou the paid subscription mod
http://mods.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=413

I think a lot of what you said can be accomplished using post based groups.

[MrFurious]

Thanks for the link!  One question though, when trying to install this mod I'm getting an error stating:

You cannot download or install new packages because the Packages directory or one of the files in it are not writable!

So what file(s) need to be made writeable to install this?

[vbgamer45]

Only Sources/Admin.php and Sources/Subs.php

The sources folder and the template folder needs to be writable to place files.

[MrFurious]

Ok, the above listed items are already marked as writeable so they should be good.  One thing I did notice though is that two folders installed outside my my main forum folder (Packagestemp and subs folders).  I would assume these needed to be installed within the main forum folder somewhere, but what I need to know is if they need to be locaed within a subfolder (i.e. /Sources/Packagestemp or /Sources/Subs). 

When I did the ftp setup when first trying to install the mod I specified /SavageForum as the directory, but I guess it didn't take for whatever reason.

This is where an InstallNotes.txt file included with the mod would be greatly helpful.  As it is, the only documentation included is contact info for the author and a prief description of the mod (same info found on the page where you download the mod).

[MrFurious]

4 days an no one can answer this last question?

[vbgamer45]

You can install it manually
http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=402