The recurring memberships is a feature quite a lot of you asked about. It took about 6 months to develop and is still in beta phase.
This definitely one of the most complicated extensions we have developed. That being said out-of-box it supports recurring memberships with Payments Module and recurring memberships with WPAdverts WC Integration, WooCommerce Memberships and WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin.
Recurring Memberships with Payments Module
If you will be using the Memberships extension with Payments Module then you can take advantage of integration with:
- Authors – will allow purchasing and managing memberships from the page with [adverts_authors_manage] shortcode.
- Emails Module – will allow editing the contents of the renewal messages sent by Memberships plugin.
To use the memberships with Payments Module after installing WPAdverts Memberships you will need to:
- Configure Pricings Availability – you can do that from wp-admin / Classifieds / Options / Memberships / Pricing panel. This will allow you to select how often and how many Ads the users can post and how the postings usage should be counted.
- Create Membership Plans – the plans you can create from wp-admin / Classifieds / Options / Memberships / Membership Plans panel. Basically, the plans allow selecting which Pricings will be included in the membership and how long the membership will be valid.
- Create a Page with Purchase Membership Shortcode – from wp-admin / Pages / Add New panel you need to create pages with shortcodes which will allow purchasing and managing memberships.
The WPAdverts Memberships are based on WP capabilities, that is if the user activates a membership he will receive a new capability (selected in configuration). You can use the user_can() function to check if the user membership is active and based on that lock and unlock some additional features (beyond the WPAdverts) to users with a valid membership.
For example, you can lock the pages with the Authors list and details and make them available to users with active subscription only.
Recurring Memberships with WooCommerce Integration
When using the Memberships Extension with the WooCommerce Integration you will additionally need the WooCommerce Memberships and optionally WooCommerce Subscriptions extension.
The WC Memberships and Subscriptions are amazing plugins although they are not cheap, if you do not have any of them you will need to spend at least $250 to purchase a yearly license (that is total for both plugins). That being said these are much more advanced plugins then the standalone WPAdverts Memberships plugin.
On the other hand. If you are already familiar with these plugins and have a valid license it should be easier for you to set up the membership using WC.
How do I get started with Memberships?
The WPAdverts Memberships extension is in the Beta stage, it means you cannot purchase it right now. If you have a valid All Extensions Bundle subscription you can, however, download the beta version from your unique client panel link. The panel link you should find in your purchase confirmation email.
If you cannot find a link to your client panel let us know using the contact form, we highly encourage you to give the WPAdverts Memberships plugin a try and let us know what do you think.
The Memberships functionality is quite complex so we decided to divide it into two separate documents one for each mode. Depending on which one you would like to use check a proper documentation link:
- WPAdverts Memberships with default Payments Module.
- WPAdverts Memberships with WooCommerce Integration (and Memberships and Subscriptions plugins).
What’s next?
Currently, the Memberships handled by Payments Module need to be paid manually, so the next step for the Memberships would be to update the Stripe integration to allow charging users automatically when the invoice is issued.
At the same time, we will be working on the Strong Customer Authentication for Stripe. CSA is a new regulation for credit card payments created by the European Union.
We want to have the update finished before 31st August. This will give users around 2 weeks to update their WPAdverts Stripe integration plugin before the regulations will be enforced on 14th September.
Since the due-date for CSA is not that far away we will be focusing mainly on the Stripe integration and it is entirely possible that the new Stripe version will be ready before the final WPAdverts Memberships release.