Importing existing user database

[redheadskater]

Hi-

I am working on a magazine website that has an existing subscriber database of about 1,200. It's not clear to me how the subscribers will get access to their account once we import them. According to documentation, once imported, S2Member will not notify them of their account (unless you enter each subscriber individually, which I"m NOT doing!). Does S2 create a password for them upon import? Will the subscriber have to click "forgot password" in the login box and retrieve their password that way?

If anyone could explain how this is portion is supposed to work I'd appreciate it.
Lisa

[sheilahoff]

I'm brand new here and have this same question. I'm a little concerned that 3+ weeks later no one has responded to this question. Did you resolve it yourself Lisa? Please share. Thanks.

[bobrandklev]

We have a client site on a competitors membership plugin and we imported 150 users a year ago.
Now we have to manaully send renweal invoices to them as the import worked perfect but there's no connection to PayPal and the annual subscription so we are looking for a better way to do this.

I'd be interested if you got your question answered.

[redheadskater]

Never got it answered.

We are assuming at this point that we have to manually add in usernames and passwords for everyone (around 2,000 entries - UGH!)

I'm concerned that the import does not notify PayPal of the subscription - so what's the point of doing an import then? This is a VERY SERIOUS LIMITATION that should have been in the documentation so that people understand this ahead of time.

When you imported, were the fields in your Excel file THE EXACT SAME as the fields in S2member? I know they need to be. I was assuming that we needed to input the subscription date and EOT date (which would trigger the PayPal recurring billing, I thought). If not, that is going to be one big administrative nightmare.

BTW - we are using the Pro version.

[flip4520]

I am about to undertake the same task and would like to know how to best proceed without need to manually set up user credentials. Is there any options for a one step import process to integrate imported users and Paypal subscription details?

[Cristián Lávaque]

Well, I'm not in this situation because I'll start a new membership with no members previous to s2Member, but if I had to find this out, I'd import a list of two test users with email accounts I have access to, and see how s2Member behaves.

[redheadskater]

Chrsitian - that is what we will be doing. I'll post back here how it goes.

[Cristián Lávaque]

Great! I look forward to your update.

[rncphq]

I'm using the s2Member Plugin (free version) for my small membership site. I'm moving the site to a different webhost (and on a different domain name) but I have no idea how to maintain the list of members such that it is replicated in my new site. Can someone please give me an idea how this should be done?

Will simply moving the existing database (in the old site) to the new site and installing the s2Member plugin in the new site be sufficient to recreate the list of members plus their membership levels, PayPal details, etc.? I couldn't find anything in the documentation to address this... I would appreciate it very much if someone could point me in the right direction.

[Cristián Lávaque]

If you migrate the complete website, that'll include s2Member's files and data. Ask your webhost to help you with the migration.

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for all of the excellent questions.
~ and thanks for bringing this thread to my attention Cristián.

We are assuming at this point that we have to manually add in usernames and passwords for everyone (around 2,000 entries - UGH!)

Sorry for any confusion.
No, that is not necessary. The ability to mass Import/Export existing Users/Members is a
prominent feature that comes with s2Member Pro.

For the benefit of others. The "Import" feature comes ONLY with s2Member Pro. However, in the free version of s2Member, you can still accomplish the same thing in your list of Users. When you add new Members manually ( one by one ), you will have an opportunity to set an Auto EOT Time, and even go back and edit that later if you wish. EOT = End Of Term.

I'm concerned that the import does not notify PayPal of the subscription - so what's the point of doing an import then? This is a VERY SERIOUS LIMITATION that should have been in the documentation so that people understand this ahead of time.

The purpose of importing existing Users/Members is so they can gain access to the content you offer on your site. If you are migrating from one publishing platform to another, or from one installation domain to another, having the ability to import/export Users/Members is critical.

In addition, if you import the "Paid Subscr. Gateway", and "Paid Subscr. ID" fields for each of your paying Members, it IS possible for s2Member to continue communications with PayPal, or another Payment Gateway that is integrated with s2Member Pro. But only if your Payment Gateway can be configured to send all future IPN responses to s2Member after you complete the importation.

In many cases, this IS possible. In some cases though, depending on the software you were using previously, this is not possible. When it is NOT possible for your Payment Gateway to send future IPN notifications to s2Member, the best solution is to import your existing Users/Members with a predetermined Auto-EOT Time, as discussed below.

Whenever you do the import, for each Member, you can specifiy an "Auto-EOT Date ( mm/dd/yyyy )". s2Member will respond to this event automatically, and WITHOUT reliance on PayPal®. The Auto-EOT Date is telling s2Member that a specific account is absolutely going to expire at a particular date in the future, regardless of what PayPal® says or does with the Recurring Profile, or transaction on record.

So although this is not what I would consider to be a "perfect solution", it will give you some peace of mind; knowing that all of your existing Members ( those being migrated into s2Member ), are going to be denied access on a specific date that you configure yourself during import. This can also be modified later on a per-User basis, by going to Users -> click [Edit] next to a particular User in the list and this brings up a panel with all of the editable fields; which includes the Auto-EOT Date.

Just to clear up any confusion.

I was assuming that we needed to input the subscription date and EOT date (which would trigger the PayPal recurring billing, I thought). If not, that is going to be one big administrative nightmare.

s2Member does NOT initiate any recurring billing transactions ( ever ). It does create Recurring Billing Profiles and it processes initial and "Buy Now" transactions. However, all of s2Member's Gateway integrations are designed to utilize the automated recurring services offered by each of the Gateways respectively. For instance, in the case of PayPal Pro, s2Member takes full advantage of the Recurring Billing service provided by PayPal. In the case of Authorize.Net, s2Member takes advantage of their ARB ( Automated Recurring Service ), and so on. So once a sale is initially completed, from that point on, s2Member only listens to IPN responses that come from your Payment Gateway.

It's important to realize that your Payment Gateway ( i.e. PayPal®, or ClickBank®, Google® Checkout, Authorize.Net®, ccBill® ) are responsible for recurring billing. s2Member's job is to synchronize with important events that can occur with a Recurring Billing Profile. Such as a cancellation, expiration, multiple failed payments, refunds, charge-backs, and other EOT events ( End Of Term ).

So importing Users/Members into an installation of s2Member has no impact on the future billing of any existing paying Customers. -- UNLESS, your previous membership management system was integrated with a Payment Gateway, in such a way, that your software was processing recurring billing transactions instead of your Payment Gateway. For portability, we discourage the use of software packages that do this, just for this reason. It makes it very difficult to move things around in the future, because the software package ( usually proprietary ) would require special attention.

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We're always open to new ideas and suggestions.
So if you have something you'd like to share, or a list of desires, I'd love to hear about them.
~ Thank you!

[Jason Caldwell]

I am working on a magazine website that has an existing subscriber database of about 1,200. It's not clear to me how the subscribers will get access to their account once we import them. According to documentation, once imported, S2Member will not notify them of their account (unless you enter each subscriber individually, which I"m NOT doing!). Does S2 create a password for them upon import? Will the subscriber have to click "forgot password" in the login box and retrieve their password that way?

Yes, that is correct. s2Member does NOT contact them. This is a security measure. If you as the site owner need to contact all Users/Members, or specific Users/Members, we suggest using another plugin that is designed specifically for that purpose.

This one is popular: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mailpress/

And yes, if the Password field is left empty during import, s2Member will auto-generate a password for the account. Typically, a site owner will mass import all existing Members into their WordPress installation, and then send out a mass email to all Members with the subject: "Password Change Notification". The email should contain a link to your password change form.

With WordPress installations, that link always looks like this:

http://example.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword

For example, click here: http://www.s2member.com/wp-login.php?ac ... stpassword

[redheadskater]

Jason - a million thank you's for addressing all of these questions! Will have read over a few times to make sure I understand everything. So happy to have clear answers.