WP eMember Expired Account Renewal and More Tag Protection

[thk123]

Hello,

First, thank you for an excellent product, and for your equally excellent support materials.

I have two questions or clarifications related to expired accounts within the WP eMember system:

1. My first question is about the renewal of an existing, expired membership account.

Currently, it seems that an existing subscriber must go through the entire registration process again in order to renew their subscription, essentially creating a new account, as opposed to actually renewing their existing account. This includes receiving the “complete your registration email” that leads to the new account registration page, where they must re-enter all their user information again.

Is it possible to tweak the functionality so that the renewal process would, for example, just send the second “registration is complete” email with the existing username and password?

2. My second question has to do with protecting content with the “more tag protection.” When using the more tag to protect content, everything works as it should with new and existing users. However, when an expired account user logs in, the protected content, after the more tag, is still accessible.

Incidentally, when I lock down the entire page through the plug-in’s General Content protection page, the protected page is not displayed for expired accounts. In other words, the problem with expired accounts having access to protected content seems only to apply to content that is protected with the more tag feature.

Thank you for your time.

thk

[amin007]

Hi, “it seems that an existing subscriber must go through the entire registration process again in order to renew their subscription” – nope, if you have the “Allow Expired Account login” option checked from the “Account upgrade and Renewal” section of the settings menu then all your member needs to do is make a payment for the membership level that they are interested in while logged in and the account will be renewed. Remember, if a member makes a membership payment without being logged in then the plugin treats is as a new customer (it has no way of knowing that this visitor is a member).

Regarding the 2nd topic, we will take a look at our code and see what is going on with the more tag protection and expired membership.

[thk123]

Hi,

Yes — I had misunderstood the documentation, and the need to be logged in, obviously, which makes perfect sense.

And, thank you for looking in to the more tag protection. This is not a critical issue, for me anyway, so if it involves too much time, please disregard the request.

Two other, hopefully quick, questions:

1. I believe I read on another post about a possible future feature, namely, that when a user cancels a timed subscription with some time left on it, that they would be able to finish out that remaining time and not be deleted from the membership system immediately, once PayPal sends the subscription cancellation notice. Has this feature already been implemented by any chance?

2. Is it possible to embed images, for example buttons, where the protected content text appears? (E.g., “Please Login to view this Content.Not a member? Join Today!)” I suspect the image reference would have to go in the PHP files in the “lang” folder, although my understanding of PHP is rather limited, so this may not be possible.

Thank you again for your time.

thk

[amin007]

“When a user cancels a timed subscription with some time left on it, that they would be able to finish out that remaining time and not be deleted from the membership system immediately” – Yes, this feature has been added.

Yes you can embed an image instead of the text but you will need to change it in the PHP file as you have guessed. If you open another thread for this tweak then I should be able to tell you where exactly need to change it.

[thk123]

Hello again,

Sorry to re-open this issue of renewal, but I have now tested the renewal process as described above, and the system still seems to treat the renewing member as a new membership account.

Here is my current renewal experience: I have made sure to log-in to the expired account first, as you directed; at this point, the system correctly locks down the protected page content; I then follow the “Renew” link to the membership payment page; I pay via PayPal again, which confirms my payment; I then return to the site via the PayPal return to site link, but when I go to the protected page content, it continues to state that my account has expired. (I have also tried to log out and then log back in to the system, but it still claims that my account has expired.)

Meanwhile, the WP eMember plug-in has logged the renewal membership as what appears to be a new member, with no user name associated with the account; and when I check my email, I have received another “Please complete your registration” email with a link to the registration page. When I fill in the registration with my old user name and password, the system tells me that this user name is already taken. I then try a new user name, which then allows me access to the system, and WP eMember then correctly lists the new username on the Members list with what should have been the renewal account.

A couple other notes:

I am using v5.1.6 of the eMmeber plug-in.

I have double checked that the “Allow Expired Account login” option is checked, and that I have a link back to the “Membership renewal Page”, which is the same page as the my regular membership payment / join page.

Also, I am testing the system with a real PayPal account, but which is not a verified account. Could this cause the renewal failure?

Thanks for any other suggestions, and if you would like to access my set up, I’ll be glad to send the relevant information.

thk

[Ivy]

Hi, I believe your eStore plugin needs to be updated. I will send you the update form so we can get this taken care of. Please let me know if you do not receive this email.

[thk123]

Hi,

Email received, and I have sent the update request form. Thank you again.

thk

[thk123]

Hi again,

OK — I have installed the update, v5.3.2, deactivated and re-activated the plug-in, and tested the renewal process again with an expired account.

Unfortunately, the same problem persists — the expired account remains expired, and the plug-in creates a new member account instead, and sends another “Please complete your registration” email.

Again, I have made sure that I am logged in when initiating a renewal, and double-checked all settings, which all appear to be in place after the plug-in update.

thk

[amin007]

For your specific scenario you need to update the eStore (not eMember) did you do that?

[thk123]

Hi,

Ah…ok, so in order for eMember renewal to work you must also use the eStore plug-in integration for the payment buttons?

I had just been using plain PayPal buttons, to keep things as simple as possible, and just assumed that since the renewal option is located in the eMember plug-in settings, that it would just work within that plug-in’s system.

I will go ahead and integrate the eStore button process, and let you know the results.

Thank you,

thk

[thk123]

Hi,

OK — I have installed your eStore plugin, which I have integrated with my eMember membership levels, and the renewal process for expired accounts now works perfectly.

Thank you!

There is now only one other issue left related to the emails that are sent by the eStore plugin — specifically, is it possible to prevent the post-payment emails that are sent by the eStore plugin? In my set-up, these eStore emails are unnecessary, as they just duplicate the eMember post-payment emails.

I have, of course, already tried to prevent the emails by un-checking the “Send Emails to Buyer After Purchase” option in the eStore settings, but this also shuts down the eMember emails, so that no emails are sent after the payment process. (When I re-check the “Send Emails to Buyer After Purchase” option, then all emails are sent again.)

I have also tried to delete all the content in the “From Email Address” and the “Email Body,” but the fields re-populate when I save the eStore settings.

thk

[amin007]

The email that is sent from eStore notifying the product purchase is more like a receipt so it’s not a bad idea to have that but I understand what you are after and this is what you can do.

uncheck that “Send Emails to Buyer After Purchase” field again and also open the “eStore_handle_subsc_ipn.php” file and search for the following line:

if (get_option('eStore_use_wp_mail'))

Once you find it just delete that line and now it will only send the “complete your registration” email and not the “purchase notification” email from eStore.

[thk123]

Hi,

OK — I have unchecked the “Send Emails to Buyer After Purchase” field, and deleted the following line from the “eStore_handle_subsc_ipn.php” file:

if (get_option('eStore_use_wp_mail'))

Unfortunately, there are still no emails sent, either from eMember or from eStore.

thk

[amin007]

Sorry I take that back (you convinced me with your explanation so I thought you need to do a code tweak . You don’t have to do any code tweaking for this so upload a fresh copy of the plugin if you forgot what changes you made to the “eStore_handle_subsc_ipn.php” file.

You just have to uncheck the “Send Emails to Buyer After Purchase” option and that should stop the eStore’s general email (it will still send the member’s registration completion email though). If this is not happening then we need to do a test transaction with debug. This post will explain what to do:

How and When to Enable Debug and What does it do?

Once you have run a transaction with debug option enabled please share the content of the “subscription_handle_debug.log” file (make sure to empty that file before you run the debug so you can capture all the fresh info from this run)

[thk123]

Hi,

Obviously no need to apologize.

I have followed your directions, re-installed a fresh copy of the plug-in, unchecked the “Send Emails to Buyers” option, and everything now works.

Incidentally, and this may have had nothing to do with the fix, I also set the PayPal IPN notification URL to:

wp-content/plugins/wp-cart-for-digital-products/eStore_handle_subsc_ipn.php

I believe that you don’t need to set an actual path for the eStore plug-in, but I had forgotten that the old entry for the eMember IPN handling script was still in PayPal’s IPN settings, which may also have caused the email issue.

In any case, everything seems to be working now.

Thank you again for all your help.

thk

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