Paypal Integration

Unpublish posts for the author when the subscription expires

The PayPal Add-On can do this, however not for all posts by an author. If you use the PayPal Add-On to sell post creation you can set it so that if the subscription is canceled or expires that the Post that is created has it's post status changed OR you can choose to delete the post.

It doesn't automatically apply this to all posts by that same author. Only the posts created on a form that is also integrated with a PayPal payment.

Publish posts from the author when subscription is active

Again, it's not going to mass do this to all posts for an author.

The way the PayPal Add-On works is it only applies to the form that the PayPal Add-On is integrated with. It doesn't apply to anything else.

So if that form creates a Post then you can charge for that post, or setup a subscription for keeping that post. So if you use it for a directory listing and you charge $10 a month for a listing in the direct, then this would be an example of using a PayPal subscription with post creation.

The PayPal Add-On also works with the user registration add-on for user creation. If the subscription is canceled or expires then you can choose to change the users role or delete the user. Just like with post creation.

What you are describing with unpublishing all posts by an author when their subscription is canceled, and publishing all posts by an author when their subscription is active isn't something this plugin does out of the box. It handles initial charging for initial post creation and initial user creation at the time each of them are created.

However, there are hooks. So you could certainly use the hooks to unpublish all posts by a user if their subscription is canceled.

The publishing all posts by an author when their subscription is active would be more problematic. The User Registration Add-On with the PayPal Add-On only creates the users and can setup a subscription at that time. It doesn't setup a subscription for an existing user.

The User Registration Add-On and the PayPal Add-On can be used to create a REALLY SIMPLE membership system when paired with the Members plugin. But it is not a full blown membership management plugin solution by any means. It's only for simple use cases.

I went ahead and changed the user access for the add-on documentation so that all customers can at least view the documentation. So you can view the PayPal and User Registration documentation.

The documentation should be accessible, try logging out and then logging back into the support site and then give it a try.

If I write the code to publish/draft posts by author based on the status the paypal plugin enters would the dev team be able to write a hook for it?

We do have hooks in the PayPal Add-On that can be used to customize the functionality. I believe the hooks are already in place to trigger code when PayPal approves a transaction or a subscription is canceled/etc. So it should be possible to write custom code that uses these hooks and then sets post status for an author based on what PayPal is communicating back via IPN.

Where does the plugin insert the status? wp_user?

Which status are you referring to? No status is stored with the user or post.

With users if the user is created as part of a payment form then when PayPal returns the thumbs up the user is created with the role you define in your user registration setup. When PayPal IPN says the subscription is canceled or expired then you can define what role the user should be changed to if this occurs or you can choose to delete the user.

With posts, the post status is set when the payment is approved. With subscriptions, just like users, you can opt to change the post status or delete the post if PayPal IPN communicates back that the subscription was canceled.

The status of the subscription (Active/Inactive) itself is stored with the form entry. Which is tied to the user and/or post that is created.

Paypal only works with GF forms...yet I create a form that creates a post via GF. To edit that post I need to make a custom form that draws the variables from the post data. If a user wishes to 'resubscribe' would the user be required to access the original GF form or will I have access to template tags or short codes?

Out of the box the Add-On only works with new form submissions. It doesn't have the ability to create a payment or subscription for an existing post. Only posts created with the form that is being submitted as part of the original payment transaction.

Currently the subscription capabilities of the User Registration Add-On paired with the PayPal Add-On only apply to new users, not existing users.

To use them what you would have to do if you wanted users to be able to resubscribe after canceling is set the integration so it deletes the user when they cancel. Then if they want to resubscribe they would fill out the registration form and pay again, creating a new user.

It's not perfect as far as membership management goes but it wasn't intended to be a full blown membership management plugin. It is just a simple way to charge for user accounts and post creation.

We are looking into handling renewals as well as upgrades (user role changes) in a future release. We are also planning on implementing editing capabilities so that a form can be used to update a user profile, not just create one.