Subscription-Only Content?

[uiserloh]

Hi,

I am wondering if the following feature exists within Zen Cart, and would appreciate any pointers on existing contributions or mods. I am fairly PHP-literate but could not find anything on the forums - most likely, I am using the wrong search terms.

I want to set up a subscription (let's say $9.99/month, or $49.99/year). Once registered users have purchased the subscription, they can access subscription-only content on my site. Note the difference of accessing "registered customer only" content vs. "paid subscriber only" content.

I imagine that simply setting (and checking for) a cookie would not be enough, since subscribers should be able to access subscription-only content from any computer. Lastly, it would seem logical that subscribers access their content with their regular Zen Cart login information.

Thanks,

Uli

[DrByte]

I want to set up a subscription (let's say $9.99/month, or $49.99/year). Once registered users have purchased the subscription, they can access subscription-only content on my site. Note the difference of accessing "registered customer only" content vs. "paid subscriber only" content.

Zen Cart doesn't have built-in subscription support.

However, to build subscription support (and recurring billing, etc) is one thing. Restricting content to paid subscribers is yet another.

What format will the 'paid-subscribers-only' content be in ? Would it be on certain EZ-Pages? or certain products? or something else? What materials do you want to restrict ?

[uiserloh]

The subscriber-only content would be certain EZ-Pages, i.e. information about discount specials on other websites, or a subscriber-only newsletter.

One possible solution could be to have a virtual product that has a link to install a cookie (unique cookie?). Once the cookie is installed, one could introduce an if/else loop that checks if visitors are logged in and have the cookie installed.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Uli

[DrByte]

Just make paid subscribers a member of a certain discount Group (see Customers menu in admin).
Then in your EZ-pages code, check to see whether the logged-in customer is a member of any appropriate groups, and allow/disallow display based on the results.
No cookies needed.

[gabenn2]

A spin off on this, I wanted to do a subscription type thing where they could get so much product for free by purchasing a subscription each month. Does something like this exist?

Thanks