Hi,
I was playing with this a little,and I have not been able to find the functionality as you describe.
I'm an old BBS person, WildCat, maily, but several others as well. The thing I liked best about WildCat, was the ability to set up groups, such that each group had it's own permissions, and groups were able to be combined. You could use the groups as payment objects, and by that, you could expire groups differently. You could add people to groups, and their access was the combined total -- similar to Unix permissions -- but more robust.
For instance, a "new" user had no permissions. A "validated" user successfully passed the call-back (today, that would be responding to an email with a key-code). A Paid user had further access, and perhaps a certain amount of tokens to be used, or limits. When their "paid" status expired, they could be set to an "expired" level, which had more privs than "validated" but not all the privs of a "paid" user.
And, then, there could be multiple levels of paid users.
For 10 years I've been hoping to see this sort of functionality on the web, but it's not been available (in a robust program).
Gossamer Forum's payment system seems to be missing the "logical" (at least from my old-world standpoint) flow of access.
Maybe if GT reads this, they can explain if it is there, or if it's not there, for certain.
1) Users have "no" access, or default access until the pay.
2) Users have a choice of access plans, which gives them access to various boards and features for a certain time limit, or a certain number of message posts (new-thread posts -- as in a support board). Maybe a certain level lets them post x-attachments, or download n-attachments.
3) When the users access plan expires, they are set to an "expired" level based on their access plan.
The group "New_User" would have virtually no access.
The group "Verified_User" would have a tiny read-only access to some things.
The group "Paid_01" for example, would give 30 days access to the basic forums, up to 200 message postings, and when expired would set the user at level Expired_01 which would let them _read_ posts but not reply (or even trickier, let them read posts for up to 30 days after their Paid level expired, then no new messages)
The group "Paid_02" would have access to several additional forums, 400 message postings, and when expired would set the user at level "Expired_02" which would have the same characteristics as Expired_01, except would include the additional forums.
The group "Sponsored" would get access to the basic forums for n-days, no posting limit, and would drop to "Expired" with read-only powers for the basic groups.
And something like "VIP" would have access to everything, 1000 message limit, etc and drop to Expired_VIP with a sub-set of access powers.
I was not able to find this functionality in GForum. It might only be me not understanding the docs, but GForum was not constructed with the overlapping "Groups" as the basis for access, which makes assigning complex "paid" access rights problematic.
I might be wrong on this, GForum is a new beast for me, but I'm trying to get the hang of it.
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