Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Amanda Watson
Amanda WatsonFlag for Australia

asked on

Can you assign a user to a shopper group after they have purchased membership

I am using joomla 1.5.1.5 vm 1.1.4

I would like a shopper to be assigned to a shoppers group after they have purchased membership (as a product)

Does anyone know of an extension that may be able to achieve this, or a core extension I could use and possible hack the code?

I have seen this post, which may help, but I need a bit of help from the beginning?

I hope someone can help?
Avatar of Jesse Matlock
Jesse Matlock
Flag of United States of America image

I'm not familiar with an extension that does this .. but one may exist. Have you searched through the Joomla Extension directory or posted to the VM forum?
We've stopped using/supporting VM altogether as a development team, simply because of the coding issues and quality we continue to run into with VM.

I'll do what I can to assist.. but, if you are looking for a membership system.. you're probably better off finding one that suits your needs or having one built to your specs.. getting VM to 'jump through hoops' outside of basic commerce is tedious, inconsistent and not much fun :)
Avatar of Amanda Watson

ASKER

Right, I kinda figured as much.  I have posted in VM forums but have not had much support.
I was just directed to look for an extension.  I will look further into it, but was hoping someone might have done something similar?

It seems like a pretty simple request I would have thought?
I feel your pain ;) Many of our clients wanted this functionality, and already having VM installed thought it would be 'easiest' to integrate it.. turned out, that was furthest from the truth :O So, we ended up making custom solutions for most of them.
The concept itself is very simple.. but implementation is not easy. Especially when working with VM' code.. it's disorganized, poorly written and outdated (IMO).. and was never intended for this type of 'functionality', hence the difficulty. Then, IF you are able/willing to put the time/money into developing something for it.. it could be overwritten and possibly need to be rewritten for any upgrades to take place.. not the ideal scenario.
The shop I am actually building is still in development mode, so I can switch to another ecommerce solution, which I really didn't want to do in this case, but this requirement is critical for the client so I need some kind of a solution for them??
Again, I hear ya... the most 'basic' solution we put together for a client (due to limited budget) was a payment form that processed payment through Paypal, then using their IPN generated a username/password and email it to them and the admin.. they could then login to access the 'members only' portion of the site.. its external from Joomla, but essentially gives the visitors the same experience as a built in component.. and, again, the client didn't have the budget to pay for developing a bespoke component for this.. it seems to work well for him. Just a thought :)
SOLUTION
Avatar of TonyCabone
TonyCabone

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Take a look that virtuemart user manual of shopper group

http://virtuemart.net/documentation/User_Manual/User_Management.html
HI Tony, Thanks for your reply.  I did read your post about what you did, but there is one thing missing, which I wanted to know if I could do and that was have the shopper assigned to a group after they Registered, AND bought the membership, so its a little bit more complicated.

Rashgang, thanks for the link but it seems to simply outline shoppers groups which is fine to do from the backend but I am looking for more here.

Cloud9 I like your idea of using paypal and getting an IPN, but the biggest problem with this client is they don't use paypal for their purchasing, as they have their own internal payment system so I am really stuck here on this one?
Just another question Tony, but how did you assign these users to a shoppers group based on their login information?
Did they have to provide any information that allowed them to be assigned to the shoppers group?

How did you  authenticate who got the discounts and who didn't?

Was their some code they could enter or something to authenticate who got discounts and who didnt'?

Avatar of TonyCabone
TonyCabone

Users simply have the option to join the group when they register. If they select the check box, they go into the user group that receives discount. If not, they remain in the default shopper group & pay full price.
Right, see I would need some way to enforce who is entitled to be in the shoppers group?

Anyone got any ideas?
@snowball,
All I can say is this is really outside the scope of what VM can/should be doing.. I know thats maybe not what you want to hear,. but if you are looking to sell subscriptions and then have that user added to a shopper group, specific to that subscription.. VM would require SERIOUS hacking to make that happen.. something I wouldn't recommend.
A simple (I didn't say 'easy') solution would be to create paypal buttons and use paypals IPN response to 'ping; a script you code, that would create a user for that purchase, based on the response from Paypal. We've done this before for a client and it works well.. a very basic, rudimentary type of subscription setup.. but, with only 1 or 2 subscriptions, it works well. There are also subscription systems out there that provide an API to tie into your site.. so, instead of Paypals IPN, you would use their API to return the needed data to your script that would add the user to a Joomla group.
I don't think the client uses Paypal so I need to then look at using a different subscription module of some kind and use the API ??
Yes, you can do the 'same thing' using another payment processors API, like auth.net for example. That main thing is to utilize the 'returned data, or result' from the payment processor to then create the username, password, email that to them and possibly admin and base the user group on the item number (or other unique identifier for each subscription). The process would be the same for any processor.. you just have to do the 'handling' of the data between the site and payment processor.
Ok so the first thing I would need to do is find out what payment processor to use?

Then select a subscription management module that can handle the results from the payment processor?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of lenamtl
Hi, do you still looking for a solution?

You can check AEC component
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/e-commerce/subscriptions/10723

or other similar solution on this page
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/e-commerce/subscriptions
Hi There,
Would these work with Virtuemart?
Hi you can use Virtuemart with AEC.

See some information here using a patch this is what I used in the past::
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=25949#msg89727

more recent update
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=20001.360
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=60217.0


I will be back to follow this up...
lenamtl,
If I use AEC, do you know if I can install this component, have shoppers BUY a product from the VM shop after REGISTERING.  Once they have bought the produce AEC can manage to put the user who just bought the product into a shoppers group which then allows them to get discounts immediately?

The links you provided are a bit overwhelming at the moment and I don't know where to start to find what I need to do.

I just want to be sure that this can be done before jumping in and discovering it can't be done?
Those VM forum posts were about Community Builder not AEC too?  DO I need Community builder with AEC to work?
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
I will not get a chance to try all this out as we have moved to Big Ecommerce!