Subscription Application
Start accepting subscription payments on Ning, and “make your own paid social network for anything”. You can use this application for anything - to start a club, run a web service, run a niche social network - anything that you can think of can be facilitated by combining Ning and the Subscriptions Application.
The Application uses PayPal Recurring Payments to accept subscriptions for your site. Users are sent to PayPal to complete the subscription, then sent back to your site. PayPal talks with the Subscriptions Application in the background, to provide complete user management and access control for your site!
Subscription fees are processed automatically after user signup, so you dont have to ever worry about renewing anyone’s subscription, its all handled by PayPal and PayPal tells the Subscription Application whenever it does something.
FEATURES
The Subscriptions Application has a host of features, its been built to operate as a complete solution for accepting subscriptions on Ning.
- 3 different package levels, users can upgrade between them.
- Accept recurring payments at PayPal or by credit card.
- Access control for each package level
- Upgrade users to higher access levels automatically
- Create free accounts
- Modify any user record
- Track all payments received and activity on the site
Setup
Login as Network Creator
You need to be logged in as the Network Creator to setup the software.
Go to the Subscribe page
Hit on the subscribe tab and in the first instance this will run the script at /mods/subscription/setup. After that it will show the subscription options.
Clear your website cache
Some users have had problems at this point in that their template seems to show some bugs. If you have problems with the look of your site, you will need to clear the web cache at http://examplenetwork.ning.com/lib/scripts/invalidateCache.php where examplenetwork is replaced with your Ning URL.
Activate your Application.
Activate your software by going to /mods/subscription/activate through the admin page. You will be taken to PayPal and to NingMods, after which your aplpication will be active.
PACKAGE SETUP There are 4 available packages within the application, and you have the option to turn each of them on or off as needs be. You can also rename the packages to display a different name if you need to; for internal purposes though they are called:
- bronze
- silver
- gold
- life
Remember:
You can rename the package titles as you see fit.
You can turn each of the packages on an off as you require, so you can run a package that just has the one level of subscription, up to a multi-package application with different levels of access available to each, by visiting /mods/subscription/updatepackage or selecting Package Setup from the admin menu.
NOTE!
Its recommended that you set these up in a reasonably sensible manner; we’ve put as much effort as we can into ensuring the logic works, but it requires you to do sensible things, including:
- if you have less than 3 packages, stop using the higher level ones and start with the lower ones.
- if you just want the one level of subscription, either use the “Bronze” package with the other packages turned off.
A bit of sensibility in here will go a long way and prevent unnecessary issues!
PAYPAL SETUP You will need to use an existing PayPal account or create a new PayPal account in order to accept payments.
The application uses the fetaures of PayPal Website Payments Standard functionality to facilitate payments. You will need to create a Business or Premier account and may have to verify your account with your bank.
After you have created your account you will need to set up your IPN and Website Payment Preferences as described below.
Configure IPN.
IPN is ESSENTIAL for the Subscriptions Application to function.
1. Click on Profile → Instant Payment Notification to configure.
2. Click the tick button to enable IPN.
3. Enter in the name of your website in the URL box at the bottom (this value doesnt matter as we overwrite it).
4. Hit the Save button.
Configure Website Payment Preferences.
It is helpful to enable PDT on your account as well, as a failsafe in case of IPN failure.
1. Click on Back to Profile Summary or get back to your profile any other way.
2. Under Selling Preferences click on Website Payment Preferences.
3. At the top of this page, set Auto Return to ON, just put your website URL in the required box - this gets overwritten by us.
4. Down the page a bit, turn Payment Data Transfer to ON and leave the rest of the settings as is.
5. Hit the Save button - you will be given a PDT Token
6. Make a note of your PDT Token.
Configure Subscriptions Application on your site
Now we finalise the settings on the Subscription Application.
1. Go to the Subscriptions Application at /mods/subscription/adin
2. Under PayPal setup click on Payment Settings .
3. For Login Email, enter in your PayPal login.
4. For PDT Token - enter in the PDT token you just made in your sandbox account and set your currency as needed.
RESTRICTING PAGES An essential part of the application is to restrict access to various parts of the site depending on the membership level of the user:
- Not Logged In - for those people not logged in - visitors etc
- Not Subscribed - for those people who have joined but arent subscribed.
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Life
To restrict access to a page, just click on the appropriate access level and enter in the “extension’ of the URL you want to restrict. For example if you want to restrict access to www.ningmods.com/video you would type in /video in the appropriate level, this will also affect all the urls downstream of that.
Remember:
If you restrict a page to a certain package, make sure you restrict access in all of the lower packages as well.
For example: if you want to stop Silver people uploading videos, make sure you also restrict the lower packages, including “not logged in” and “not subscribed”.
The function basically looks for any URL that includes the string you put in, so all “child” URLs of that will also be restricted, providing a lot of flexibility and allowing you to control different levels of the Ning features by being judicious with your choice of URL.
For example:
- Restrict access to all of the forum postings - /forum
- Restrict access to starting a discussion - /forum/topic/new
- Restrict access to viewing the detail any forums - /forum/topic/show
- Restrict access to viewing a particular forum - /forum/topic/show?id=2024230%3ATopic%3A81 (as an example, dont copy this exactly)
It is recommended that you test after setting anything in here, to make sure it works the way you want it to!
REDIRECT
Type these two lines of code into your Manage -> Analytics box
<script type="text/javascript" src ="/mods/jquery/131"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src ="/mods/subscription/js"></script>
Remember that you need to set up your page restrictions properly as per above.
As you may have noticed, the javascript redirects happen with Javascript, and its not optimal, as it takes time to load the script, and the redirect doesnt happen until then.
Last year, before widgetlaboratory.com ruined it for everyone, you were able to write to the index.php in the root directory of your Ning site without requesting source code, and thus we had a PHP redirect which was bullet-proof.
After WL decided to go rogue, Ning removed access to the index.php file, and we cant write to it anymore, and thus (if you want to keep the updates being rolled out to you automatically) we have to do it via Javacript which, as you mentioned, has security problems.
So, unless you want to request the source code for your site, and thus opt out of getting updates automatically, we have to implement ths javascript method, though there are a few things you can do to speed it up:
1. Turn chat off.
2. If you have a lot of code in your Analytics box, put the subscription redirect towards the top (but below the Jquery line).
3. Remove any unneeded code from Analytics.
If none of this works, or is unsuitable, you allways have the option of "Requesting Source Code Access" which will allow you to implement the PHP method by writing into the index.php in the root directory, but also means that you wont get updates. Note that it *might* be possible to request source code access, update your index.php file then request to go back onto centralised code.
So please be aware that we are working within the confines of what we are given, and thus there are limitations in how it works, but there are options to speed it up.
The Application uses PayPal Recurring Payments to accept subscriptions for your site. Users are sent to PayPal to complete the subscription, then sent back to your site. PayPal talks with the Subscriptions Application in the background, to provide complete user management and access control for your site!
Subscription fees are processed automatically after user signup, so you dont have to ever worry about renewing anyone’s subscription, its all handled by PayPal and PayPal tells the Subscription Application whenever it does something.
Intro
Package Setup
PayPal Setup
Restricting Pages
Setting up Redirect
Package Setup
PayPal Setup
Restricting Pages
Setting up Redirect
FEATURES
The Subscriptions Application has a host of features, its been built to operate as a complete solution for accepting subscriptions on Ning.
- 3 different package levels, users can upgrade between them.
- Accept recurring payments at PayPal or by credit card.
- Access control for each package level
- Upgrade users to higher access levels automatically
- Create free accounts
- Modify any user record
- Track all payments received and activity on the site
Setup
Login as Network Creator
You need to be logged in as the Network Creator to setup the software.
Go to the Subscribe page
Hit on the subscribe tab and in the first instance this will run the script at /mods/subscription/setup. After that it will show the subscription options.
Clear your website cache
Some users have had problems at this point in that their template seems to show some bugs. If you have problems with the look of your site, you will need to clear the web cache at http://examplenetwork.ning.com/lib/scripts/invalidateCache.php where examplenetwork is replaced with your Ning URL.
Activate your Application.
Activate your software by going to /mods/subscription/activate through the admin page. You will be taken to PayPal and to NingMods, after which your aplpication will be active.
PACKAGE SETUP There are 4 available packages within the application, and you have the option to turn each of them on or off as needs be. You can also rename the packages to display a different name if you need to; for internal purposes though they are called:
- bronze
- silver
- gold
- life
Remember:
You can rename the package titles as you see fit.
You can turn each of the packages on an off as you require, so you can run a package that just has the one level of subscription, up to a multi-package application with different levels of access available to each, by visiting /mods/subscription/updatepackage or selecting Package Setup from the admin menu.
NOTE!
Its recommended that you set these up in a reasonably sensible manner; we’ve put as much effort as we can into ensuring the logic works, but it requires you to do sensible things, including:
- if you have less than 3 packages, stop using the higher level ones and start with the lower ones.
- if you just want the one level of subscription, either use the “Bronze” package with the other packages turned off.
A bit of sensibility in here will go a long way and prevent unnecessary issues!
PAYPAL SETUP You will need to use an existing PayPal account or create a new PayPal account in order to accept payments.
The application uses the fetaures of PayPal Website Payments Standard functionality to facilitate payments. You will need to create a Business or Premier account and may have to verify your account with your bank.
After you have created your account you will need to set up your IPN and Website Payment Preferences as described below.
Configure IPN.
IPN is ESSENTIAL for the Subscriptions Application to function.
1. Click on Profile → Instant Payment Notification to configure.
2. Click the tick button to enable IPN.
3. Enter in the name of your website in the URL box at the bottom (this value doesnt matter as we overwrite it).
4. Hit the Save button.
Configure Website Payment Preferences.
It is helpful to enable PDT on your account as well, as a failsafe in case of IPN failure.
1. Click on Back to Profile Summary or get back to your profile any other way.
2. Under Selling Preferences click on Website Payment Preferences.
3. At the top of this page, set Auto Return to ON, just put your website URL in the required box - this gets overwritten by us.
4. Down the page a bit, turn Payment Data Transfer to ON and leave the rest of the settings as is.
5. Hit the Save button - you will be given a PDT Token
6. Make a note of your PDT Token.
Configure Subscriptions Application on your site
Now we finalise the settings on the Subscription Application.
1. Go to the Subscriptions Application at /mods/subscription/adin
2. Under PayPal setup click on Payment Settings .
3. For Login Email, enter in your PayPal login.
4. For PDT Token - enter in the PDT token you just made in your sandbox account and set your currency as needed.
RESTRICTING PAGES An essential part of the application is to restrict access to various parts of the site depending on the membership level of the user:
- Not Logged In - for those people not logged in - visitors etc
- Not Subscribed - for those people who have joined but arent subscribed.
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Life
To restrict access to a page, just click on the appropriate access level and enter in the “extension’ of the URL you want to restrict. For example if you want to restrict access to www.ningmods.com/video you would type in /video in the appropriate level, this will also affect all the urls downstream of that.
Remember:
If you restrict a page to a certain package, make sure you restrict access in all of the lower packages as well.
For example: if you want to stop Silver people uploading videos, make sure you also restrict the lower packages, including “not logged in” and “not subscribed”.
The function basically looks for any URL that includes the string you put in, so all “child” URLs of that will also be restricted, providing a lot of flexibility and allowing you to control different levels of the Ning features by being judicious with your choice of URL.
For example:
- Restrict access to all of the forum postings - /forum
- Restrict access to starting a discussion - /forum/topic/new
- Restrict access to viewing the detail any forums - /forum/topic/show
- Restrict access to viewing a particular forum - /forum/topic/show?id=2024230%3ATopic%3A81 (as an example, dont copy this exactly)
It is recommended that you test after setting anything in here, to make sure it works the way you want it to!
REDIRECT
Type these two lines of code into your Manage -> Analytics box
<script type="text/javascript" src ="/mods/jquery/131"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src ="/mods/subscription/js"></script>
Remember that you need to set up your page restrictions properly as per above.
As you may have noticed, the javascript redirects happen with Javascript, and its not optimal, as it takes time to load the script, and the redirect doesnt happen until then.
Last year, before widgetlaboratory.com ruined it for everyone, you were able to write to the index.php in the root directory of your Ning site without requesting source code, and thus we had a PHP redirect which was bullet-proof.
After WL decided to go rogue, Ning removed access to the index.php file, and we cant write to it anymore, and thus (if you want to keep the updates being rolled out to you automatically) we have to do it via Javacript which, as you mentioned, has security problems.
So, unless you want to request the source code for your site, and thus opt out of getting updates automatically, we have to implement ths javascript method, though there are a few things you can do to speed it up:
1. Turn chat off.
2. If you have a lot of code in your Analytics box, put the subscription redirect towards the top (but below the Jquery line).
3. Remove any unneeded code from Analytics.
If none of this works, or is unsuitable, you allways have the option of "Requesting Source Code Access" which will allow you to implement the PHP method by writing into the index.php in the root directory, but also means that you wont get updates. Note that it *might* be possible to request source code access, update your index.php file then request to go back onto centralised code.
So please be aware that we are working within the confines of what we are given, and thus there are limitations in how it works, but there are options to speed it up.
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