I am in a custom capabilities logic trap

#1

I love this plugin and am amazed at it’s power and flexibility. So far, so great. But, before I add custom capabilities to my membership levels, I want to understand what happens to the original membership and to the upgraded membership from a dollars and sense point of view.

Here is how I set it up. I have had about 10 real members testing it for me as we build it:

  1. No free level, do not want, do not need, will not accept free, all fields are filled out properly, I am satisfied that it work exactly how I want it to.

2, One membership level 1, the software has given me as an admin level 4 access. I am ok with that. I also installed user role editor and have configured this the way I want it. Everything works great. I love it.

  1. I want to add 2 custom capabilities now and use this same basic structure for anticipated growth in the future.

Example: I have student and teacher members. The students have a custom capability that ends with the initials of their teacher. The teacher has a slightly different capability that identifies them as teacher and includes their same initials. They meet in a classroom page and they have access to different things on the page, There are other parts of the page that are available for the site visitor to see, which is used for marketing of that teacher. It works beautifully. I use the simple short code conditionals to allow visitor, student, teacher & member to see different things

Here is what I want to do and want to make sure I understand.

  1. I want this to be a subscription based membership with monthly recurring payments. So the basic level 1 member access is to the content on the site and the ability to add content to the site using protected front end entry forms. It works. I make the stripe proforms for new member and they work great.

  2. I add the student ccap to the modified button builder and it works great.

  3. I add the teacher ccap to the modified button builder and it also works great. The simple short code conditionals work well with the ccaps protecting what I want them to protect.

But, these are all for existing members

I want my students to have the ability to downgrade from one teacher to basic level 1 and then when ready allow them to upgrade to a different teacher. When ready could be an hour from now, a day from now or a month from now I also only want to allow the teacher swap one teacher at a time…

But, what about the brand new member? I don’t think it will go over very well to:

  1. ask them to sign up for a basic membership and pay, and then turn around immediately and ask them to sign up for the class and upgrade to the basic membership + the class fee. Also quite a few of my members will not ever be teachers or students, but, involved members of the buddypress community.

Membership: $8/mos
Membership + class fee: $68/mos

So when they upgrade, are they going to be charged $60 + $16?
Or will they only be charged the $68 which is my intention?

And when they downgrade to membership only, I just remove the ccap from the modiication form and this will take them back down to just the membership fee of $8?

I could create a page with links to separate forms:
New member only
New member + class
Existing member + class
Downgrade to basic member
Cancel

But, more options means less conversion and more opportunities for misunderstandings and then no action.

What my site has on it:
1 single site
wordpress
buddypress
s2member
each plugin added has been tested for compatibility and it is in very finely balanced working order.

Sorry to be long winded and if this is not in the scope of the forums. But, super thanks for any advice I can get. Because this is dealing with people and their hard earned money, I don’t want to mess this up.

1 Like
#2

Hi Linda.

I love how you’re taking advantage of the power s2Member gives you, and what an interesting setup you’re creating with it. :slight_smile:

As you see, the pro-form isn’t a shopping cart to customize an order, so you’ll have to create separate shortcodes for each combination, which you can then display based on conditionals, or have them as options (see WP Admin > s2Member Pro > Wrapping Multiple Shortcodes as “Checkout Options”)

Or you can create a custom thing with PHP, passing a few variables in the URL to the payment page, where you can customize the shortcode with some conditionals based on those values in the $_GET array. https://www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php%3Ff=36&t=1604.html

To remove ccaps, check this article: https://s2member.com/kb-article/rolescapabilities-via-php/

Be aware that EOT demotion can remove ccaps, make sure it’ll work the way you need/expect it to. WP Admin > s2Member Pro > Stripe Options > Automatic EOT Behavior

I hope that helps! :slight_smile:

#3

Hi Linda @iempoweru - Trying to help here - so what I’m reading is they sign up under one teacher, say Mrs X with a ccap, say “mrsx” The pay $68 to access only Mrs. X’s teaching. Next they decide they are all done with Mrs. X now and want Mr. Y’s teaching material. So what you want is for them to pay $8 and continue their membership but access Mr. Y?

If I have that part right, what about several sign ups (hopefully you have PRO it makes life so much easier), one for each teacher. So you’d have Mrs. X sign up , and Mr. Y sign up. Next within Mrs. X’s member page, you put a pay now button for Mr. Y that is $8 and gives a ccap of mry.

The only issue I can see (because I have my customers accessing different programs too) is that when they buy on top, the old ccap stays. So you’d have to manually remove that, or decide to just let them continue to use Mrs. Y AND Mr. X since they paid for them? As long as they have a valid membership active, then maybe that would work for you?

Also when I downgrade clients, I just have the system delete them. I find it’s cleaner for me personally.

Of course if I misunderstood, none of this will work for you LOL sorry if that’s the case. :slight_smile:

#4

@clavaque and @Starbucksamore great feedback both of you and my thanks. So, Cristian I was waiting to see if my idea worked before reporting in. And it appears that it does. It works well. As you mentioned, the ccap has to be removed manually from the user profile when the user changes ccaps. This is not bad today, but, I know will be cumbersome when I get more people on. Will see how it operates and go from there. My original concern has been answered by a testuser.

Her initial $8 membership renewed and then a few days later, she upgraded to the 1st teacher. Smooth sailing and access. THen I went into her customer profile on stripe and here is what happened. The $8 membership was cancelled and the new upgraded membership was activated. So that is exactly what I wanted. When I have another testuser downgrade and switch to teacher 2, I will update this thread.

Also, I am using “user role editor” and have set all members to have Member(level 1) and author. Then the special ccap gives them access with the simple short code conditionals. I also use “user submitted posts pro” to allow them to enter only from the front, in pre-set format and categories. And then these categories are listed by category/by subject matter. Makes it really organized for all people.

Gillian thank you so much for your feedback. I do have the pro version and I love the form on the site, solves so many UI issues/discomfort. I only want to allow 1 teacher at a time, however, if this becomes difficult, I will consider what you are suggesting.

My main goal is to keep the base membership continuous because that is also tied to the buddypress portion of the site. I can’t have them just terminate, because then it terminates their profile on the site. And I predict that will end up being a major draw to the site for several reasons. THey are very social and there is great discomfort in the hinterlands about the problems that facebook is experiencing. Kind of trying to anticipate the future here.

The other thing is that I want the recurring membership for both the base and the teacher and can’t get that with a one off button. ALthough I will give teachers the ability to have those buttons on their page as well.

All in all, if my only problem is manually removing their access to one teacher, I am doing great! I LOVE s2member. It is everything I was looking for plus. Thank you Cristian for taking the reins to keep it going.

2 Likes
#5

Wonderful! It’s amazing how we tweak S2member well beyond the original intent haha.
Would you consider marking this as resolved at this point? :slight_smile:

#6

Yes it is and certanly.

2 Likes
#7

@Starbucksamore I know this is a very stupid question, but, how do I mark it resolved? Thanks in advance!

#8

No worries - are you able to edit the original title and just put RESOLVED in front of it in brackets perhaps? :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

#9

Glad I could help you! And thanks for the kudos! I’ll do my best. :slight_smile:

Regarding marking resolved in the subject line, don’t worry. That may have been a standard for a while here and Gillian is used to that. I never used it in all my years giving support and it was okay. I open every thread that has new posts anyway, and skip already read ones.

What I would love, if you feel like it, is a rating over at wordpress.org… https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/s2member/reviews/?filter=5 :wink: