Private Forum for customers

[pawan2]

I want to create a private forum for customers only.

What I'm doing currently is that I have set password for that particular forum and give the password to the customers when they buy products from me.

The problem is they have to enter password every time they want to visit the forum.

Other alternative I am thinking of is creating a separate "Customer" usergroup and give access to that group only. This is the perfect solution for me but how to automate it so that I can give customers the instructions for automatically upgrading themselves to "customer" usergroup? I don't want to manually add all the new customers to the usergroup.

[Nick]

The only way users can automatically be promoted is if they have reached a certain amount of posts, a certain reputation level, or a certain amount of days they've been registered.

AdminCP -> Usergroups -> Promotions

So if the criteria they have to meet is buying a product from you, then you would have to manually add each user to the Customers group.

[rgf207]

This can be done in a few separate ways. If they are purchasing a paid subscription from you, than vBulletin can handle the subscriptions and will upgrade the usergroup upon purchase. If they are purchasing something from your site that is not related to vBulletin, than you would have to code it yourself to change that user's group to the "Customers Group"

[pawan2]

My customers are buying a paid product directly from my website so there is no vBulletin involved.

I want to give those customers access to "customer only" forum automatically.

I think subscription can do the job and it can be automated if it has feature something like this:


Step 1: My customer buys product from my website

Step 2: They goto the thank you page of the product and at the same page I give them "UNIQUE CODE" for accessing the private forum

Step 3: When they use the unique code they get automatically added to the customer only usergroup.

Is something like this possible or any hacks for doing that?

[rgf207]

My customers are buying a paid product directly from my website so there is no vBulletin involved.

I want to give those customers access to "customer only" forum automatically.

I think subscription can do the job and it can be automated if it has feature something like this:


Step 1: My customer buys product from my website

Step 2: They goto the thank you page of the product and at the same page I give them "UNIQUE CODE" for accessing the private forum

Step 3: When they use the unique code they get automatically added to the customer only usergroup.

Is something like this possible or any hacks for doing that?

That is absolutly possible but would require some coding on your part. This is how I do it on my site

1. Customer places order and pays with paypal
2. PayPal's IPN sends notification to my site and my script processes the transaction. If the transaction is successful it is logged into the database
3. My script verifies the order and automatically changes the user's primary group to the "Customer" usergroup and they have access.

vBulletin's subscription manager is not used at all in my script

[pawan2]

That's a nice setup. Can you please send me the script you are using?

Also, what happens if the user is not already a forum member or using different email for the forum?

[rgf207]

That's a nice setup. Can you please send me the script you are using?

Also, what happens if the user is not already a forum member or using different email for the forum?

Sorry I don't send out my code. I wrote it especially for my CMS so it would not benefit you. My CMS integrates with vbulletin. I would suggest visiting PayPal's Sandbox for instructions. That's where I got all the info I need.

If the user is not a forum member they can't purchase. They have to register before purchasing or they register during purchase