[RFC] VIP Paid Membership

[Master_Cylinder]

The reason shy it that it better of as an extension is that it something very specialize and I don't see many forums needing it. How many forums have you been to that have VIP plans?

and Why do you think that this is better than some of the other suggestions?

*gets ready to faceplam again or even fail if need be*

I've been to several forums that have premium content/access. Much more than 1% that some tried to claim.

Because this suggestion is actually about forums and member access...unlike html newsletters which was embraced.

Speaking of FAIL, you can save the childish picture insults too...

[Danielx64]

The reason shy it that it better of as an extension is that it something very specialize and I don't see many forums needing it. How many forums have you been to that have VIP plans?

and Why do you think that this is better than some of the other suggestions?

*gets ready to faceplam again or even fail if need be*

I've been to several forums that have premium content/access. Much more than 1% that some tried to claim.

Because this suggestion is actually about forums and member access...unlike html newsletters which was embraced.

Speaking of FAIL, you can save the childish picture insults too...

Also how many forum systems have you seen that have payment gateway/support for PayPal ect out of the box? IP.Board requires you to buy an addon, I think VB is the same. MyBB doesn't have this as far as I know.

[Master_Cylinder]

Also how many forum systems have you seen that have payment gateway/support for PayPal ect out of the box? IP.Board requires you to buy an addon, I think VB is the same. MyBB doesn't have this as far as I know.

I don't know of any that support it right out of the box...but why can't phpBB be the first and capture more of the market? That is why I suggested it. Does somebody else have to do it first, in your opinion?

[Danielx64]

Also how many forum systems have you seen that have payment gateway/support for PayPal ect out of the box? IP.Board requires you to buy an addon, I think VB is the same. MyBB doesn't have this as far as I know.

I don't know of any that support it right out of the box...but why can't phpBB be the first and capture more of the market? That is why I suggested it. Does somebody else have to do it first, in your opinion?

Yes doing something that no one else done first is a good thing and I do embrace that, but as others said, this is not something that a lot of boards would use.

[Master_Cylinder]

...but as others said, this is not something that a lot of boards would use.

Based on what? Based on the notion that charging for access is wrong because profit is bad if the SW is free? Based on a half-dozen people that claim it's outside of the scope of phpBB even though it *is* about actual forums? If phpBB *didn't* support making forums and posting topics/replies there wouldn't be a lot of people using it at all. This is a feature that would bring more users and more existing users *would* use it...if they could. I think a *lot* more boards would do it if they could do it easily, *especially* if it was free, supported and included.

Wouldn't it make sense that if phpBB was the first to include it and make it easy for admins/owners that *more* would use it? Doesn't it make sense that the reason fewer boards do it, now, is because it's harder to find a solution that works or because it's more expensive/complicated to buy a 3rd party solution?

Pay for access/content is getting more and more popular all over the web. I'd like to see phpBB be an innovator instead of a follower...

[Danielx64]

Pay for access/content is getting more and more popular all over the web. I'd like to see phpBB be an innovator instead of a follower...

Sure it may be popular with news site I'm not so sure about other sites. Would you be happy if you had to pay to access a forum for a free product (example let say that the phpBB forums requires you to pay before you could access it, would you pay up?)?

[Master_Cylinder]

Sure it may be popular with news site I'm not so sure about other sites. Would you be happy if you had to pay to access a forum for a free product (example let say that the phpBB forums requires you to pay before you could access it, would you pay up?)?

I never said that ALL forums would/should use it, but not all forums use all of the features we have now. I'll never use the mass email feature, whether it's html or plain text. It's not *just* news sites that charge for access and if I wanted the premium content/access bad enough, of course I would pay. That doesn't guarantee that every forum that *tries* to charge people will be successful, nor that they'd all fail, but shouldn't it be up the the forum owners rather than a handful of people that lack vision, desirable content or motivation?

I'd rather be able to try and fail than not be able to try at all...and more people would try if it were part of the core. Those that fail can turn it off...

[EXreaction]

We are not going to be implementing the PayPal IPN or support for the various other payment gateways into the phpBB core.

Yes, it would be nice to support, but it is far outside of the scope of a bulletin board software. This would just become another external library and interface we'd be forced to maintain and support. We do not want to be forced into the position of having to make new releases just because someone else (like PayPal) changes their software (API) and makes ours break.

PayPal has libraries for their IPN and other gateways do as well; it's trivial to use their library and then just call a single phpBB function to move someone to a group. That's 99% PayPal/outside code and 1% phpBB code.

[Master_Cylinder]

And that's the end of that...

[Danielx64]

We are not going to be implementing the PayPal IPN or support for the various other payment gateways into the phpBB core.

Yes, it would be nice to support, but it is far outside of the scope of a bulletin board software. This would just become another external library and interface we'd be forced to maintain and support. We do not want to be forced into the position of having to make new releases just because someone else (like PayPal) changes their software (API) and makes ours break.

PayPal has libraries for their IPN and other gateways do as well; it's trivial to use their library and then just call a single phpBB function to move someone to a group. That's 99% PayPal/outside code and 1% phpBB code.

Good point