There are buttons that "guests" (non-registered visitors) use to purchase membership. These are the "Paypal buttons for Level 1 access", "Paypal buttons for Level 2 access", etc.
"Paypal buttons for Level 1 access", "Paypal buttons for Level 2 access", etc.Although these are not titled "Modification Buttons", they will ALSO function as Modification Buttons for Free Subscribers. You do NOT need to use an official Modification Button to allow a Free Subscriber to upgrade to paid Membership. s2Member can handle the upgrade all on it's own, even without a Modification Button being provided ...
with one condition:... the Free Subscriber MUST be logged into your site whenever they click the checkout button. That will initiate an upgrade process automatically. After checkout, s2Member will update their existing account, rather than asking them to register. This is handled internally by s2Member. All you have to do is make sure a Free Subscriber is logged in before you introduce the button to them.
Modification Buttons: ( aka: "all in one" buttons )Now... the special Modification Button generator for s2Member, is designed to pass the modify="1" parameter to PayPal, so that with Standard PayPal integration, an existing Customer will have the ability to (modify) an existing PayPal Subscription that is associated with their account at your site. That is the only difference between a Level #1,2,3,4 Button, and an official Modification Button. In places where you want a "one button handles all" situation, use a Modification Button, or just add modify="1" to your Shortcode; same difference.
A Modification Button will work in ANY situation. If a Customer is logged in when they click the Button, they'll get updated. If they're not, they gain access to register a new Username.What stops a free member (a "subscriber") from clicking one of these buttons? They will get redirected to create an account, but they already have their WP account - awkward.
Only if they're NOT logged in when they click the Button.
If they are logged in, everything will work just fine.
Finally, what happens if a registered person (free, level 0) wants to purchase a subscription, but they simply forgot to log in first?
s2Member will consider them a "new" Customer after checkout, because they were not logged in when they initially clicked the checkout button. s2Member will provide them with a link to register, instead of updating their existing account. You should try to prevent this from happening.
NOTE: With
s2Member Pro, you can generate PayPal Pro Modification Forms, which are designed to handle the entire process for you automatically. If you use a Pro Modification Form, s2Member Pro will not allow a Customer to checkout unless they are already logged into their account with you. This is possible with s2Member Pro, because the checkout experience is all on-site, as opposed to sending a Customer through PayPal.
Also, with s2Member Pro, the checkout experience consolidates the Registration/Checkout steps into a single Form, making the entire process smoother, and a Customer who is trying to register with the same Username/Email Address, is detected early on, because s2Member Pro handles this during checkout; and before a payment is accepted by the system.
