Personalized and private image store?

[Paul]

Say I have a portrait photo store and want the customer to be able to buy their portraits, but don’t want the public or other site users to be able to see this customer’s photos. Can eStore do this, or perhaps if I add eMember to it?

[wzp]

One possible scenario is to issue (eMember) login credentials to each customer, and then have them go to a page that only they can access. On this page, have “buy/download now” buttons for products that only pertain to them. You could also have links on that page directing them to a public “accessory” page that sells frames, etc.

In a second scenario, store each customers portrait preview as a product. Then, manually generate and email download links to each electronic preview package. If the customer decides to buy, they can go to a public page and order their print packages. You’d then collect the customer’s name, ID or other code, to determine who gets what.

The major difference between these scenarios is the first scenario requires a new page to be created for each client. Not good if the hired help is not WordPress literate. The second scenario does not require as much computer literacy for the hired help.

[Paul]

OK thanks for the ideas wzp, could you take a look at this as an alternative solution:

(Exec summary: can I use the eMember ID as a Nextgen Gallery ID so the customer only sees their own gallery?)

1. Create eMember login for customer.

2. Upload photos to Nextgen Gallery with same ID as customer eMember, for use like this: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-estore-and-nextgen-gallery-integration-create-photo-shop-1200

3. Upload csv of photo products using this: http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wp-csv-to-database-plugin-import-excel-file-content-into-wordpress-database-2116

4. Customer logs in and goes to a store page viewable by all logged in users.

5. Grab customer ID like this: global $auth; $user_id = $auth->getUserInfo(‘member_id’);

6. Display customer’s own Gallery on the store page like this: [nggallery id=$user_id template=wp-eStore]

Any gotchas, shortcuts or anything Amin might be able to do to integrate or otherwise ease any of these steps? In particular, can I use the eMember ID as a Gallery ID and is there any way to make the link between the customer and Gallery more robust (I’m worried they might be auto-generated and get out of sync etc)?

Thanks for your time!

[Paul]

OK pasting the shortcode with the product ID into every Gallery image is something of a deal-breaker as adding the product by CSV and creating the gallery are cumbersome enough already and this is just one step too many. If there is no way to automate this then is there another way to tie the images displayed to the eMember ID?

[wzp]

I’m not an eMember or NextGen expert (I do eStore), but I’m not sure about the confidentiality of eMember ID numbers. Could a paparazzi or other nosy person peruse the database by submitting random or sequential ID numbers in the URL?

Can you use a ROT13 or BASE64 encode of the user name and use that as the database index?

[Paul]

I don’t know about the ID security either, I was thinking it would be secure because you’d have to be logged in as that ID number and didn’t imagine it would get passed in the URL or suchlike.

Anyway I was just looking at that as one possibility, could you perhaps pass this all on to Amin then and he may be able to answer some of these questions and ideally inform regarding this level of integration between eMember and eStore?

[wzp]

I’m sure he’ll see it tonight.

[amin007]

When you create a gallery in NextGen gallery plugin it will automatically create an ID for it. You can’t assign this gallery the ID of eMember. You don’t need to tie eMember with NextGen gallery anyway.

You can use eMember’s section protection to protect a section of a post or page for a particular member. So you can place the gallery of a customer/member in a post then protect it using the section protection which only lets this member view it. This way no one but that particular member can view that section which has his/her portraits.

See the “Section Protection for a Specific Member” section on the following documentation:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-membership/how-to-protect-a-section-of-a-post-or-page-88

[Paul]

Hi Amin, thanks for your input, which I fully understand, but this is all looking very complex as a solution, in particular:

Adding each product ID to each photo in a gallery.

Adding a protected page for each customer (This is just one step too many in the setup, and I can’t see a seamless way for the customer to visit their ‘own’ page.)

To make this practical I need it so that once logged in the customer only sees their own products (and perhaps public ones). This could be achieved by perhaps tagging each product in eStore with an eMember ID perhaps? (blank for public). Then a shortcode to display all public plus all eMemberID-specific products on the store page.

Is this a huge amount of work? (Adding a field to products to hold the ID, adding a shortcode which would work in a very similar way to eStore categories I think). I think this would be a fabulous (and logical?) tie in between your two excellent plugins.

[amin007]

Maybe I am missing something but I am not sure why you have to add in a product ID to each photo in the gallery. If you are using the nextgen gallery integration with eStore there is one option whereby you can create a page with a particular gallery with a buy button underneath it.

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/nextgen-gallery-alternate-integration-method-805

You have to protect this gallery with the section protection of eMember so only a particular member can see this gallery. The member who can see this gallery can buy any image from this gallery. Everytime you add in a new gallery for a new member you just create a new page and do the same for him.

[Paul]

Security of the digital asset; these are the images I’m selling.

[amin007]

I see.. eStore won’t be able to handle that. eStore and eMember are separate plugins so I try not to tie them too much with features that need both of them to work.

[Paul]

Think I’ve cracked this.. I put the eMember ID in the Reference Text of the product and then filter the products displayed when the member goes to the store so that they only see their own products! Guess this would work with membership levels too, so that each level saw a customised store.

Can you see and issues I may have with this method? Is it insecure as wzp suggested earlier in the thread?

[amin007]

If it works for you then its all good. Just remember that the “Reference Text” field is used to identify if a payment is made for a membership signup.

[Paul]

No problem, I’m only using the eMember plugin for the ID I guess, although it may come in useful at a later stage. I guess I could just use the WP User ID.

It would be great to have a free field on each product that could be used for customisation like this. I’m a little surprised no-one else has had a need for displaying certain products to certain members or levels of member..

[Author]

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