members only area

[Derek Bryant]

HELP!!

We would like to create a members only area as a category on our website.

Using admin tools we intend to remove the option for a new customer accounts to choose newsletter subscription, and use this field as a flag for membership.

There would be a product created on the site whereby the customer can purchase membership, and we would then manually set the newsletter subscription for the relevant account field to YES.

As a members category there would then be a simple HTML subsite for the members.

To view this area a check would be necessary:
If the customer is signed in and the newletter flag is YES then the members site is displayed.
If the customer is not signed in or the customer is signed in and the newsletter flag is NO, then another page is displayed telling the customer to either sign in and/or purchase membership

If anyone can think of a better method please advise.

Can anyone please help with the php coding of the category page to achieve the above functionality?

thanks

Derek

[fairestcape]

Get in touch with Scott Wilson (swguy).

He helped me with a similar challenge and developed a very nice solution to it...

[Derek Bryant]

thanks fairestcape

can I contact him through the forum?

Derek

[fairestcape]

Yes... his forum name is swguy, so find his profile and send him a Private Message (PM)

[Derek Bryant]

Swguy makes a charge for this type of mod.

I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction for constructing an IF statement to check:
1. If a customer has logged on to their account
2. Whether the newsletter subscibe field is set to YES or NO

I may be able to code the rest myself

thanks

Derek

[fairestcape]

Swguy makes a charge for this type of mod.

... but I believe Scott's prices are very reasonable for the skill he has and the time he puts in.

The code he wrote for me was quite complex, and required a very good knowledge of Zencart's code structures.

At the end of the day... spend 200 (frustrating) hours on it yourself, or hire a professional...

[Derek Bryant]

I am sure SWGUY does an excellent job and is good value for money.

But I was hoping that a simple IF statement on the main page would do the job, as per previous post:

"I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction for constructing an IF statement to check:
1. If a customer has logged on to their account
2. Whether the newsletter subscibe field is set to 1 or 0"

It seems that category descriptions are stored as text pages and therefore PHP commands will not work.

The Define pages - main page - is a .php file so a link to the members secion could be placed here with the above checks.

I am still trying to find a flag or whatever to 1. above.
Using PHP and given the account reference the condition 2. looks straightforward.

Again, any help, much appreciated


Derek

[fairestcape]

I don't think it's that simple, unfortunately.

To create a member's area, your shop needs to know (and store in the database) not only the details of who those "members" are, how they are given/denied member status, and what features membership is linked to, but when those members are visiting your shop, how the additional resources made available exclusively to them and not to others, are configured, priced, displayed and featured.

If they enjoy benefits such as member products, and/or member prices, then a fair amount of coding is necessary to manage all the processes that govern their exclusive access to such features.

[Derek Bryant]

Hi fairestcape

Thanks for your interest and responses – if I may I’d like to expand on the project.

I am doing this job for my son who runs a fishing bait company.
He has been using the Zen Cart shopping cart very successfully for the last year or so.

He wants to create a members area on the site.
The members will have a (group) discount of 10% across all products.
They will also have access to a members area on the site where they will be sections for videos, articles etc.
He has accumulated over 200 customers already – most of which have signed up for the newsletter option.

My thought processes are as follows:
Use the newsletter field as a flag for members.
Make all existing customers who haven’t signed up for the newsletter, members by setting the newsletter option. Thus existing customers become members.
Remove the option when creating an account to sign up for the newsletter using Admin/Configuration/customer details.
Comment out the code where the customer can edit his newsletter option.
Set up a product on the site for purchasing yearly membership.
On purchase of the membership, manually alter the customer details to set the newsletter flag to indicate membership and allow the 10% group discount.
“Normal” customers will not have this newsletter flag set unless they purchase membership.
The membership area will be accessed by the main page which is accessed via Define Pages Editor/define_main_page.php
(I wanted to set up a members category, but as category files are stored as text files, I thought it would be easier to use php commands to communicate with the customer database)
On the define_main_page.php I need to check before allowing access to the members area:
1. if someone has signed in to an account
2. if the newsletter flag is set

And give messages to indicate what the customer must do to become a member.

If both of these conditions are true they gain access to the members area which will be a normal hyperlink to a sub-site.

At the moment I am struggling with the php commands for the main page.

I am testing on the main page this coding (with a customer signed in):

<?php
$querynewsletter = "SELECT customers_newsletter FROM customers";
$resultnewsletter = mysql_query($query)
or die ("couldn't execute query");

echo "<br> customers_newsletter {$resultnewsletter}<br>";
?>
With this output:

customers_newsletter Resource id #220

I was hoping for “1” !!!

Am also looking at !$_SESSION['customer_id'] along with PHP/MYSQL manuals


I hope all this makes sense!!

Again, any help would be appreciated

Derek

[fairestcape]

Hi Derek

OK, I see what you are trying to achieve now.

I don't have the level of PHP knowledge to suggest how you tweak the code for your needs (that's why I hired Scott), but the site he helped with is at:

www . commotionstore . co . uk

It's been about 2 years since I was involved in this project, and I handed it over to a very skilled PHP operator, so he has probably improved the CLUB feature.

But take a look there and see if it's kind of what you're looking for.

Perhaps you can contact Scott again, and if he's OK with it, I would be quite happy for you to get the code he developed for us, and you could play around with it to see if it works.

Naturally, this is ENTIRELY at Scott's discretion, and he may elect not to give it to you, or perhaps to charge you a fee for the time and administration this may require. That's up to you and him to negotiate. All I'm saying here is that I have no problem with him releasing the code to you.