Do you want to be able to charge for bands to list on your site?
Yes
95%
[ 19 ]
No
5%
[ 1 ]
Not Sure
0%
[ 0 ]
Total Votes : 20
j_ramos
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 14
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posted: 02/20/04 17:08
Is anyone charging for bands to list on their site? I'm fairly certain I'm going to add this feature, as I anticipate bandwidth usage is going to go through the roof on this site once it's launched, and I can certainly justify charging $5 or so to list on the site, to cover the cost of co-locating to a server with a couple of OC's coming in to handle everything.
I was hoping someone already had it coded; if not I'll probably knock it out tonight, but I thought I would ask first. I doubt I can get it integrated into the admin panel right away, but I can hack the signup file to do it for now, and that's fine with me. Is this a feature anyone else might want, or should I just ghetto-rig it for myself and leave it at that?
Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Posts: 37583
Location: Seattle, WA
Posted: 02/20/04 17:55
j_ramos:
Is anyone charging for bands to list on their site? I'm fairly certain I'm going to add this feature, as I anticipate bandwidth usage is going to go through the roof on this site once it's launched, and I can certainly justify charging $5 or so to list on the site, to cover the cost of co-locating to a server with a couple of OC's coming in to handle everything.
I was hoping someone already had it coded; if not I'll probably knock it out tonight, but I thought I would ask first. I doubt I can get it integrated into the admin panel right away, but I can hack the signup file to do it for now, and that's fine with me. Is this a feature anyone else might want, or should I just ghetto-rig it for myself and leave it at that?
j_ramos -
Let me know how you might integrate it into your signup page, as I think it might be handy to some other users as well. Thanks!!
- Brian
p.s. I removed one of the options to your poll - hope you don't mind
Thanks!
Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 5341
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posted: 02/21/04 01:42
I have some nominal charges listed on my site for quotas other than the free 'entry level' one, but I've not implemented them at all. because I'm still promoting the site to get some bands onboard, I'm offering free upgrades at the moment to the 'right' folk/rootsie bands !!
But only yesterday I experimented with an 'upgrade' link to PayPay.
I copied the 'paypal form' from one of the generated theme pages, edited the variables appropriately, and pasted it into my page with the quota lists on.
The link seemed to work and the appropriate words on the paypal page came up.
Presumably if Brian was to integrate it into JR, it would be in the user admin bit?
Cheers
Paul
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 14
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posted: 02/22/04 18:14
All right; so right now I've got a table linking quotas to prices. On the signup page, there is a select box asking you to pick your quota level, with the price for that next to the description string. They select one, and submit.
The user account is created as normal, but the validation email isn't sent out just yet. We need to push the user over to Paypal and have them make a payment to us before we do that. I don't want people signing up and handing over activation for their account without verifying that they actually payed.
So in comes Paypal's Instant Payment Notification. You, the site owner, have to login to Paypal, and setup the location of the script that is going to be used to let you know you got paid. This is where you can do that at:
I've customized a script to verify a payment and place the payment information into a new table in the jamroom database, jamroom_payments. When a verified payment is entered into this table (it'll also log rejected payments there, too), then we send out the validation email, and everything should be good to go. If it was rejected, we tell them to try again.
The only thing that isn't written yet is the transition from account creation to Paypal, and then from Paypal back to a page that let's them know they should wait for a.) an activation email or b.) an email saying that their payment was no good.
There's no way to change the payment through the admin panel yet; I just created the table by hand with the amounts and the IDs for the quotas. This will definitely need to be added, too. I'm hoping to have it all wrapped up in the next few days, but I thought I would report the progress. I'm trying to make it as automated as possible; I don't want to have to verify the payments myself and then send out an activation email. It should be seemless and let them start playing around with their site if everything looks good after signing up, and not waiting around for me to check my email before they can do anything with it. And, like I said, I'd rather verify the payment before I let them on the site.
So that's where things stand; I'll post again once it all works together, and I have a chance to test everything out more.
Bigguy: There should probably be a table that stores the 'sid' string, and have the signup script check that the one passed matches the one stored. If I had seen the jamroom code before, I could find a way to activate an account that hasn't been payed for, and I'd rather not have to do too much checking beyond signup for the fee. Minor detail, really.
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 14
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posted: 02/22/04 18:19
Oh, you will need to have PHP 4.3 or greater on the server you're using, with OpenSSL support compiled in. You have to bounce information back to Paypal through a secure socket from the notification program.
Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 5341
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posted: 02/23/04 05:43
Quote:
I have some nominal charges listed on my site for quotas other than the free 'entry level' one, but I've not implemented them at all. because I'm still promoting the site to get some bands onboard, I'm offering free upgrades at the moment to the 'right' folk/rootsie bands !!
But only yesterday I experimented with an 'upgrade' link to PayPay.
I copied the 'paypal form' from one of the generated theme pages, edited the variables appropriately, and pasted it into my page with the quota lists on.
The link seemed to work and the appropriate words on the paypal page came up.
Presumably if Brian was to integrate it into JR, it would be in the user admin bit?
Cheers
Paul
As I said above, I've got a simple way for users to upgrade running now. Goto www.motagator.co.uk/about.php and have a look at the source to see the modified form in the table.
It seems to work, and it'll do for now until something whizzier comes along
Cheers
Pash
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 14
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posted: 02/23/04 13:05
pasher: I really like the table you've got there explaining the different options. I'm definitely going to add that to the Paypal stuff I'm working on. The options for each quota will be pulled from the ones stored in the database, so the features for each level can just be changed in the admin panel, and they'll be reflected there. I was just going to make a seperate page explaining them, but it's probably best to have everything right there on the signup page.
Joined: 29 Feb 2004
Posts: 551
Location: New Orleans
Posted: 02/29/04 10:53
I own a website New Orleans Bands.com. At the beginning of the year we started charging and the bands are paying. Our services are a little different though. We give the bands things and they get discounts with our partners. We try to make sure the small membership fee pays for itself...the big plus is our bands get gigs, because its a local site.
so yes...pay pal would be very awesome!!!! and maybe a way to aprove all artist submissions? i may be jumping the gun, just iinstalled the demo and working up to the full...
Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 5341
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posted: 03/01/04 01:53
Hi Vin
Disable the Online Shopping by only allowing themes that don't have it included - ie. disallow all the Version 2 themes and the KL Clouds one.
hth
Pash
