Help with subscription form?

[jaykay]

Hi everyone,
A friend of mine is soon to launch an online magazine and has asked my advice on how to add a subscritpion form for online paying subscribers. I have no idea as all the info on my site is completely free. But if anyone can help, perhaps by recommending a website that offers help/advice/programming on subscription coding then that would be great.
Thanks
Jay
http://www.homeworking4me.co.uk

[jaykay]

P.S. I think I wasn't very clear in my last post. What she's looking for is the means to set up the site to accept registrations. I think she's already registered with Paypal so accepting online payment okay. Any ideas on how to set up a 'registration' form to enable people to subscribe to the online magazine which will require a log in?
Thanks so much for this.
Jay
http://www.homeworking4me.co.uk

[1BIZLIST]

I think you are talking about two seperate issues here, firstly you need to create a login script that will allow access to the password protected area, this is not overly difficult in php, or if you are not too worried about logging which members come and go etc, simply password protect a directory (very easy if you are running Cpanel) The main problem with the latter method is stopping people who have subscribed and then stopped the subscription from accessing the members area.

So personally I think you need to go the php route, you would then keep track of members payments, if the subscription is cancelled you would then have a simple interface that allows you to turn accounts on & off with the click of a link (your biggest problem is that it sounds like neither of you code, in which case you will need to hire a coder to implement this for you, I'm not aware of any free script to do the above, sorry)

The second part of your question is quite easily resolved as paypal have a subscription service which means you can setup payments to be withdrawn on a weekly / monthly basis.

HTH
Mark

[csn]

PHP is ideal for this.

PayPal solution:

• User creates an account
• User taken to PayPal to set up a subscription
• PayPal IPN updates database to allow visitor in.
• Each time subscription is taken, IPN should be able to keep updating the database with new details.
• If user cancels, IPN should be able to update database.

This all rests on IPN which I'm not to keen on.

My preferred solution with Nochex:

• User signs up for an account
• User taken to Nochex to pay for one period
• Nochex APC updates database
• User send an email as soon as subscription expires to renew.

The second solution is more pay as you go, which I as a subscriber would prefer. PayPal is silently recurring which scares me somewhat!

To develop either solution should take around a week if you know what you are doing and don't spend every hour of every day working on it! I developed a digital downloads script using Nochex APC which took about a week. It runs like a dream and once the bugs were ironed out, it runs automatically!

Plus, I prefer Nochex over PayPal due to the amount of complaints made against PayPal on the net. http://www.paypalsucks.com/ details a few of these.

[jaykay]

Thank you all so very much for your excellent advice and time. Very much appreicate all your help. Will pass on info.
Jay