Paid subscriptions and board permissions

[Duffield1]

I've set up a subscriptions system for my forum - I want some areas to be exclusively accessible for paying subscribers and some for non-paying users.  I've set up the subscription levels (for monthly/annual options), so now I want to set the boards so that they are only visible to subscribed members.  How do I do that?  The default permission for the boards is 'regular member' and 'moderator/admin', but I can't see an option for 'subscribed members'.

Also, I know that PayPal is the only 'official' way of offering paid subscriptions, but are there any mods written or planned that would allow you to use WorldPay instead?  I suspect that most people wanting to subscribe would be doing so as part of their paid jobs, rather than personally, and I doubt they'd want recurring payments on their own account.

[Kindred]

in each board settings you can specify the groups which have access to view the board.
alternatively, each emmebrgroup also lists the boards that membergroup has access to see.

You can then apply specific access: read only, read/respond, post new, etc in the permissions profiles section.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Not a good idea to use recurring payments.  It's poorly designed and buggy, and screws up Paid Subs on many forums.  Hopefully it'll be fixed in 2.1.

[Duffield1]

Okay, so automated regular payments using PayPal might not be a good idea - has anyone else any experience of using another system to co-ordinate payments, such as WorldPay? 

[Arantor]

The paid subscriptions system needs a massive overhaul. And then new payment backends added to it.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Even if you are able to integrate WorldPay with SMF (don't know if anyone has), you'll still have the basic design problems with recurring payments, most notably that there is no way to manage recurring payments in ACP, and there is no way for members to cancel a recurring subscription.

If Paid Subs works on your forum (depends on host configuration and mods you're running), not having recurring payments is not a big deal.  Paid Subs sends an email notification to members when subscription is about to expire, which gives them the option to renew before expiration.  Recurring payments will charge them regardless, even if they've long ago left the forum, and even if the forum no longer exists (a.k.a., 'fraud').

[Duffield1]

But surely part of the communications process, if you are an honest provider, is to include details of how to unsubscribe which, for example with WorldPay, requires you to contact WorldPay, rather than forum provider?  I use a similar system (as a customer) to subscribe to online survey software, and I know how to cancel if I so wish.

[Kindred]

I think that the problem is: recurring payments must be cancelled from the user's PAYPAL side of the account.... There is no interface to cancel it on the SMF side.

[Arantor]

That's not the only problem. There are entire payment types just not handled by SMF.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Yes, that's a frequent problem.  Many Paid Subs errors are caused by transaction types that are not in the forum code.

[Duffield1]

I've been talking to some PHP coders about customising my forum so that it can accept other payment techniques -I've been quoted £350 ($500) to do this by a company that has a lot of PHP-based experience, and they reckon it is about three days work.  Does that sound reasonable?