Paid Subscriptions - Point of Conversion

[elbeer]

I have a question about the paid subs. I am going to market my forum using my affiliate network. I can track the clicks etc with the network I own but I need a point of conversion in the script where I can place a conversion pixel.

The point of conversion I was is just after the payment has been verified and the user gets moved to the new paid group. Can someone point out where this is part of the script occurs I have tried a few different things so far and can not get it to work.

Here is the progress of the user

1. User signs up to the forum
2. User then goes to subscriptions in their profile and pays for a membership
3. Payment is satisfied - I WANT TO CONVERT HERE
4. User is moved to new member group

[Arantor]

Um, what exactly are you trying to track?

The payment being satisfied is a process that has no user facing code whatsoever - the payment system only makes the change once PayPal notifies the forum - and that's to a URL that users never ever go to... but it can also be some time after the payment was physically made. It's not a process the user has any input in, it's an asynchronous notification from PayPal.

[elbeer]

Ahhh you could of just narrowed down my problem.

It will be in the IPN from paypal - so paypal ping the IPN file and it is in that file that I need the forum to basically say - yes the user has paid and can be upgraded to new member group.

Let me check that file and I will see if I can find it.

If you can post the success payment part if you find it before me that would be helpful

[Arantor]

The forum already does all that for you, it already handles the update to accounts...

[elbeer]

Yes but i want to notify my affiliate network that a new subscriber has joined using a postback img pixel

[Arantor]

Except the postback img pixel cannot be used for the very reason I just gave you - how can you supply the user with an image when the notification won't ever be shown to them?

[elbeer]

No you dont understand.

Let me explain.

1 a user clicks an advert on bing.com for example using an affiliate link - which generates a clickID - lets call that 12345
2. The affiliate link redirects the user to myforum.com/index.php?clickID=12345
3. Now when the user signs up and becomes a paying member and all is confirmed by paypal i need to place a postback that tells the affiliate network that the clickID=12345 has converted into a paying member.
This is never shown to the user it is hidden and simply pings the affiliate network using an image pixel 1px x 1px to tell it that clickID=12345 has paid

[Arantor]

No, I'm fairly sure I do understand. That image isn't going to happen because the IPN isn't user facing, so you will have to make that HTTP request manually from the subscriptions.php code - the browser never ever goes there (so the user won't ever make that request)

But on top of that, the affiliate link value will have to be manually stored by you somewhere because the user initiating the subscription request and the IPN callback are two separate and unrelated processes handled by two separate entities...

[elbeer]

Got you. So I need to use a postback rather than an image pixel.