Allow One Member to Create Approved Sub-Licensee Members for Software License

[lkinca]

I am using eStore, eMember and Affiliate platform to create a site through which I can sell licenses for a premium software product. Basic idea is a user signs up for a software license through PayPal and gets added to the ‘Software License Admin’ group. The user can then log in to the software product using their eMember log in and password…the software checks for active subscriptions in the database.

This seems simple enough. But the next step is where I am a bit at a loss of how to spec the project. The software license admin can sign up for a single user license (use case above) or a multi-user license. In the case of a multi-user license, I would like them to be able to add a list of approved sub-licensees to their profile and have those users be added to the ‘Sub-licensee’ group, which the software will also check against for an active account before giving them access to the account.

I am able to add the sub-licensee field to the profile using the extra profile fields functionality, but can you point me in the right direction of what the best way to allow that account admin to add their sub-licensees to the ‘Sub-licensee’ member group would be? Are there different options for how this can be done? We would also need to be able to deactivate the sub-licensee accounts when the account admin cancels through PayPal.

Ideally I would rather not change eMember or eStore code so it is easier to update, but I am willing to do that if necessary.

Thanks for your help.

[amin007]

Looks like you need to have membership accounts that are sub-member of a full member. The account of these sub-members are dependant on the full member.

eMember is not designed to to do this but here is what comes to my mind:

The sub members are also members but you can put them in a separate membership level so you know that they are not the full member just by looking at their membership level. Now, in every sub member’s profile there will be a field that specifies who they are under (specify the member ID of the main member perhaps).

When the main member cancels the subscriptions your script can check which sub-members have this cancelled member’s member ID in their profile attached. You cancel those accounts too.

[lkinca]

Thanks for the response. I understand your approach, so just some custom code there to handle that. In terms of getting those users signed up to that sub-level, do you have any recommendations? In general, I am thinking of something along the lines of this:

1. License purchaser goes to profile and adds sub-licensee email address to an ‘extra profile field’.

2. That email address then gets a sub-licensee registration email and can join.

3. License purchaser can then deactivate sub-licensees through profile by changing account to ‘inactive’ or deleting them all together.

This would work, but it would probably be quite a bit of custom coding to several components of your plugin. I am not opposed to that, but really don’t want to get to a point where we have to do major changes and testing every time you update the plugin. Is there a less intrusive way you can think of?

Thanks for the help.

[amin007]

I recommend using a plugin that was designed to handle this type of requirement. You will save a lot of time if you use the right tool. I don’t really know of a product that will do this but thats what Google is for

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