Have you ever had a user complain about the complexity of subscribing to your site?

First you register - then you subscribe. Most visitors just don't understand this process, or, they register at some obscure page of your site and expect great benefits only to find that they must subscribe on some other page to get to see the good stuff.

On our sites, it is very common, on many of our pages, to have an account login module, permissions set to un-authenticated users, reside below the module that subscribers have permission to see. These are surrounded by advanced settings, header and footer content, describing the benefits of a subscription, and the control asks the user to login or register.

From any of these pages, if a user chooses to register, they can - but they are no way connected to to the subscription page.

A common problem with the current scenario is the fact that you must have the User Registration setting, in DNN Admin Settings, set to public, private, or verified.

This means if you set up a page with an Account login module or you use the [USER] token in your skins, there are countless places that a user can register without ever being redirected to your subscription page.

If you want to start out with a frustrated user, this is the way to do it.

I first attempted to perform a work-around by setting the Admin Settings -> User Registration to none. This elimanated the countless registrration points that a user could use to register on a site. The [USER] Token was hidden and the Account Login module hid the register link.

Discovery - By setting site user registration to none, when you click the register link in Subscription Tools, you can't register.

For a subscription site, my suggestion is to integrate user registration into Subscription Tools. I know this is possible because Catalook store does this during the checkout process.

By integrating user registration into the module, and having the ability to set DNN user registration to none, you now have a single point (Subscription Tool module) to complete subscription.

No more complex work-arounds.

Now, if you have an account login module on various pages, the registration link will not show. No more incorrect redirects and many more happy subscribers.

In the meantime, if DNN would add the functionality of a re-direct property on the User Registration module, the current setup would work. Looks like, for now, Dynamic Registration by Data Springs or the UcanUse User Login Module might have to be the tools of choice.

Scott,

I have it in progress as you can see in the private message access I sent you.

If you would like to see how Catalook integrates the user registration into the checkout process, go to www.jivemg.com/store. Don't login and follow the checkout process. It set for demo and will not process a real order.

Between transferring 25 sites to a new VPS location and going into back surgery on Wednesday morning, I have a life that is a bit complicated right now.

TIA
Buck

Hi Scott,

Just trying to keep this functional consideration alive.

Also, I would be interested in knowing how many others would have a need for affiliate functionality in Subscription Tools.

Hi guys... I just was reviewing this post and wanted to add that Dynamic Registration now supports payment directly on the registration form. I have created a thread that discusses this here:

Dynamic Registration w/ Authorizenet

Currently the only payment gateway that is supported is Authorizenet but others will follow. You can also setup recurring billing, accept both credit cards and checks, easily define a calculation field (including calculating multiple fields together and calculating multi selection field types such as checkbox list groups and also listbbox fields). The module will soon support PayPal as well.

-Chad

You can 'kind of' achieve this by going to user accounts/user settings and choosing a page to which users are re-directed after registration. Say this page is called 'Subscribers' you can then put the subscription tools module on that page.

Now your user will get the DNN sign up form when they choose to register, and when they click Submit they will see the page reload showing the 'choose a plan' form.

Hi Nick,

You are correct. Where the issue comes in is that, if you need to add an Account login module, for example, as the re-direct page for secure articles on NewsArticles module, you still have orphan registration links on your site. No matter how clearly how describe that registration is a prelude to subscription, visitors still register expecting additional content. And, conceivably, become disappointed when there is none.

i think i have sort of gotten around this, but it is not live quite yet... tell me if i am missing something.

I created a page called "Join". Page settings security is set to everyone.
On that page is a User accounts module, set to unauthenticated only. below that is the subscriptions module, set to Registered users.

Then i changed some of the localization settings - so the link at the bottom of the registration page now says "Next: Choose Plan >>" (i also changed the blurb of text at the top to say "Step 1 - Create login". Once they click the link to go to Step 2, the page refreshes and there is the subscriptions module. The user account module disappears because they are no longer unauthenticated.

I then changed the redirect for the main register link in the skin to go to the Join page once it is submitted. i will also change the text from "Register" to "Join".

I think that covers it all so far that i can tell, but i am a nEWB, so who knows. I just tested the news articles/security and set it to redirect to the Join page, and it looks like it works to me, and is pretty self explanatory. Certainly much better than i thought it was going to be before i started screwing around.