How can i restrict access to only my paid members?

Hi all and thank you for your help,

I'm building an ecommerce website that offers a membership plan and i want to give my paid members exclusive access to the forum am creating with forumotion. How can i do this? basically when a member is a paid member on my site a new menu is available with a link to the forum @forumotion. But i also know that the url mysite.forumotion.com is public. How can i restrict access to the forum to only those members coming from my website?

Thanks all for your help
Ziad

you have to set the forums permissions.
i would also put the members in a group and have the permissions set for the group as well.

or you can have it to where you activate the members so you can check out who is who before activating them and just have the permissions set for members.

either way it will all be in how you have the permissions set for the forums on the forum.

admin panel>general>forums>forum permissions> i would click advanced for the permissions as well.

Thanks Kirk,

What forum permissions do, to my knowledge, is restrict you until you're a member. So if you signup then you may reply, view, write etc.. What i want to do is add another layer of restriction, not only you need to be a forum member, but a paid member coming from my site. Is there a more streamlined way to do this, i can manually manage members for a start but with thousands of subscribers i will need an easier way.. Any ideas?

Thank you
Ziad

znassif wrote:Thanks Kirk,

What forum permissions do, to my knowledge, is restrict you until you're a member. So if you signup then you may reply, view, write etc.. What i want to do is add another layer of restriction, not only you need to be a forum member, but a paid member coming from my site. Is there a more streamlined way to do this, i can manually manage members for a start but with thousands of subscribers i will need an easier way.. Any ideas?

Thank you
Ziad

well the only way i could think of doing that is do not let anyone in until you received payment from pay-pal or there credit card. pay pal would be the way to go. so as soon as it's confirmed that you received payment then and only then allow them to be members.

you cam always allow them to register but you activate them your self once payment has went through.

it sounds to me that you are charging from one site and then allowing them onto your forum after they are a paid customer ? you can always create a spread sheet for them to fill out for your records as well. i do not know all the details so i cant really suggest anything more at this time. but that should help a little.

Thanks a lot kirk,

I'll allow them to register as you suggested then activate them when i receive payment. I was just wondering if there's an automatic way to achieve this.

Cheers
Z

silly me how do you get them to pay? is there a link to pay pal or something?

Yes i'll get them to pay on my site. I'm building a complete ecommerce store/membership website showcasing an author. I have virtuemart on Joomla built in which has a paypal module and a membership module hooked up to paypal as well. Once i confirm receipt then i will manually activate their forum account. For those who land on the forum first, i'll redirect them to my home page using a link. I guess that's the best way.. unless there's an automatic way i'd love to know about.

Z