Time limited trial w/o subscription?

[BozoTheClown]

Hello experts!

Here's my current subscription model. I wonder ifs2Member do that out-of-the-box:

After FREE registration (no PayPal involved), the user will have access to ALL content for 7 days (or preferably, for up to 100 page/post accesses). Once the time limit expires (or the user has accessed more than 100 pages/posts), access is locked and the user needs to subscribe using PayPal.

Any way to configure this kind of operation using s2Member?

Thanks!

[jeffreygaudette]

I would also like to know if this is something that can be done with S2Member. I would like to offer users a free trial that expires after a set period of time without going through PayPal.

Why? From a marketing perspective, I want to introduce the least amount of hurdles to a user signing up to my site. Having to provide cc info is a big hurdle/trust issue to overcome and I would rather have them experience the site first and see how awesome it is.

Thank you for your response.

Jeff

[KirkWard]

One idea ... use s2Member drip timing to remove permissions for a free (level 0) subscriber at a certain time, unless they have a level 1 or higher subscription (paid subscription). Jason can provide better details, but I think it is quite possible.

[ndavidson]

Maybe I'm over simplifying this, but my approach would be to try setting the paypal button for the 'FREE' membership as a "one time (x days/weeks/months)" and set the fee to $0.00

Because it wouldn't be a recurring fee it would last only so long as you select.

That's just the approach I would likely try first. I don't know if it works, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

[sugeneris]

Here's something I've done for a client recently. It could probably be prettied up a bit, but had to be done quickly. Sorry about all the PHP tags, but I've obviously removed a bunch of stuff to strip this down, so it makes more sense in context. Depending up on your situation, some of this templating may have to be in slightly different locations. This project is only protecting the single-entry pages, so we just built it right in there.

Someplace global like in header.php, we define a constant:

Code: Select all

define("PREVIEW_EXPIRY", "86400");  // 1 day = 86400 seconds


Then, around the top of single.php we figure out if the entry is older than our time limit:

Code: Select all

<?php
if(is_single()) {
    $pubDate = get_the_date('c');
    $pubUnix = strtotime($pubDate);
    $now = time();
   
    if(($now - $pubUnix) > PREVIEW_EXPIRY) {
         $expired = true;
    }
}
?>


And then wherever it's appropriate to start wrapping the stuff you want to protect:

Code: Select all

<?php if (current_user_can("access_s2member_level1")){ ?>
        [This gets shown to people with whatever access you're testing for in that if statement]
<?php } else { // These are our non-subscribers  ?>

    <?php // Then in here, we can say:
        if($expired) {
            [ This post is more than PREVIEW_EXPIRY old, so show limited content ]
        } else {
            [ This post is less than PREVIEW_EXPIRY old, so show full content temporarily ]
        }
    ?>

<?php } ?>


[ndavidson]

ok, if there is no 'sign-up' process involved the only way to accomplish this would be to map out the IP address to track.

With a sign up of any kind (any method of registering a user in WP) then you can use the 'one time fee' in s2Member to control it.

[jeffreygaudette]

Thanks @kirkward, your idea would fulfill what I was looking for, but I am not sure how to do the drip access. I will look for documentation and videos to see how it's done.

Setting the option for a one-time payment still requires my user to go through PayPal and enter credit card or PayPay info. This might lead to abandonment, especially if they don't understand nothing is going to get charged.

Thanks for the help