Decide from the beginning if you want to have PAID submission or MEMBERSHIP submission.
Membership allows users to “rent” display space on your site for their published properties.
It’s a fee to have x number of listings published on your website for a certain time (x number = is the number of listings allowed in the active membership package). Multiple purchases DO NOT SUM listings.
Here are the most important notes to consider when you set membership-based submission.
- If you choose membership for submission, decide from the beginning what are the free membership listings included and the number of featured included.
- Each new account gets a free membership at registration, with free listings included and free featured listings wich were set by Admin in Theme Options > Membership > Membership Settings. If you change this limit, the change applies to NEW accounts (not old ones).
- Changing options on the way, after your users have already registered and sent listings, is NOT recommended. Old accounts will have to be manually edited.
- The theme will work with the Subscriber role, so for packages to expire and all membership options to work correctly the user role needs to be set to Subscriber.
- The users receive an email with 3 days before the membership package expires. The email content can be edited from Theme Options > Advanced > Email Management.
How to setup the membership
Step1: Navigate to Theme Options > Membership > Membership Settings and Enable membership and set Free membership options.
Important
- Free Listing expiration considers the publish date + the number of days set in admin.
- The user and admin will be informed about every free listing that expired via email. Help article about Email management
- Free listings cannot be re-published after expiration. The user must upgrade to a paid package to get extra time on the website for his properties.
Step2: Create the Membership packages from admin Dashboard > Membership packages
A Paid Membership package includes
- Name
- Payment cycle (day, week, month or year),
- Payment cycle value (x days, x weeks and so on),
- Listings included,
- Featured listings included (deduct from total listings)
- How many images are included per listings
- Package price
- For what user type the package should display in the user dashboard
- The Option to display package or not in the user dashboard
Important
- Payment processors (PayPal / Stripe / WooCommerce Payments ) cannot support payments with 0 value. So do not create a package with 0 value.
- PayPal doesn’t process packages with titles that contain characters like . or –. Do not use such characters.
- If you enable just Wire Transfer, you can manually activate invoices with 0 payment (if that’s something you wish to do). Since you manually control invoices, it’s possible only in this case.
Step3: Set Payment options
The theme supports:
- recurring payments (if you use the theme merchants PayPal or Stripe)
- non-recurring payments (if you use the theme merchants PayPal, Stripe, Wire Transfer or WooCommerce payments)
How to buy a package. How to upgrade a package. How to downgrade a package.
Users see all packages in User Dashboard.
From this section, users buy the package they wish, upgrade or downgrade the purchased package.
Important
- The recurring checkbox is optional. It applies to PayPal or Stripe payments. It means the payment will be taken automatically from the client account when the package expiration date is reached.
- If payment fails when done through PayPal or Stripe, the user will continue to have Free Membership by default (if it’s the 1st purchase) or they will be downgraded to free membership if it’s a recurring payment that failed to be processed.
- When users buy or upgrade to a paid package, they will receive the number of listings included in the package purchased. Listings do not sum.
- If users have already published an “x” number of properties, those properties will be automatically deducted from a number of available listings after buying or upgrading the package with more listings included.
- If a user deletes a property, that property is still counted as listing used, so the number of listings included will not change after delete.
- Users CANNOT have 2 packages at the same time.
- When a user upgrades to a new package, that new package limits will start to apply from the moment of the purchase, even if the user had x days/weeks/months/years from previous membership.
- If users downgrade to a package with fewer listings than his current number of published listings, ALL his listings will be set to EXPIRED and they will have to be resent for approval. User CANNOT send to resubmit more listings than his current package allows him to.
- Users can make listed properties featured based on how many listings / featured listings are included in the package.
If a user has Published and Expired listings, and decide to upgrade/downgrade his membership package – in case the published properties match the number of included listings in the new package (it’s a smaller or equal number), the published properties stay published. Expired listings stay expired.
The users receive an email with 3 days before the membership package expires.
Help article about how to add a property
How to cancel a package
A one-time payment will automatically be canceled by Stripe or PayPal at the end of package availability.
A recurring Stripe payment can be canceled from the theme user dashboard. The package will expire at the end of package availability and it will not be renewed automatically.
A recurring PayPal subscription can be canceled only in user PayPal account. The package will expire at the end of package availability and it will not be renewed automatically.
If Paypal or Stripe Payment Fails
If the user’s package expires because he didn’t renew or he doesn’t have money, the package returns to FREE MEMBERSHIP by default.
Expired Listings
All listings will have status EXPIRED (expired listings won’t show in listings) if:
- A users package has reached the available date and a user has not purchased a new package
- A user has chosen to have his package renewed every x days/weeks/months/years but the recurring option didn’t go through because payment failed (usually it means no money in user account)
- The user downgrades his package to a package with less included listings than the number of listings he has published.
When expired properties are resent for approval, the theme options (manual or automatic approval) will apply.
How to change membership expiration date format
Date syncs with wordpress – you can change format there
