Yes, you are correct in your assumption.
However, there are a few variations on this event flow, so I will outline them here:
If you are selling a "Buy Now" Membership, then a Customer is redirected immediately to your Registration Form after checkout. If you are selling a "Recurring" membership, a Customer is also redirected to your Registration Form immediately after checkout.
The only differences, are when (a) you offer a free trial, or (b) there is a subscription modification taking place. In other words, anytime there is NO money being exchanged ( at least, not initially - as is the case with a free trial ), PayPal does NOT send s2Member any data in the Auto-Return/PDT response. Therefore, post-checkout processing is handled entirely by the IPN system, and via email.
When a free trial is being offered as part of the Subscription package, a Customer will receive a different message after checkout, asking them to "please check their email" for a link to the Registration Form. So, it's the same functionality. The difference is, with a free trial - the Customer receives a link via email, instead of being directed to the Registration Form immediately. They can still register, they just have to wait for the link via email, which takes anywhere from 2 seconds, up to 5 minutes in some rare cases.
I should also point out, that emails are ALWAYS sent after checkout, even if the Customer abandons the checkout system before being returned to your site. This way a Customer is never left empty-handed. Every Customer will receive a link via email that allows them to create a login and access what they've paid for.
If you have a Customer that somehow slips through the cracks, due to mis-configuration, server downtime, or some other issue... you can create their account manually as part of customer service. Just log into your WP Dashboard, and navigate to: Users -> Add New. You can setup a Username/Password for them, assign an s2Member Role, and even update the PayPal® Subscr. ID manually if you need to.Statistics: Posted by Jason Caldwell — June 30th, 2010, 5:00 pm
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