Admin Approval Before Access

I need to know the steps I have to take in order to setup Admin Approval with Membership Pro! A lot of other membership components have this option built into the program but Membership Pro Doesn't or I have not found it yet!

So in clear terms what is the process of setting up Admin Approval before a consumer can gain access to a my website?

Now I have the Admin Approval option in Joomla already selected but I don't know if Membership Pro disable this when selecting the redirect plugin of Membership Pro, that redirect all registration to Membership Pro Subscription Page... And being that some users of Membership Pro has posted people have gain access to their system before receiving payment, my goal is to make sure I receive payment before approving a membership request! And another reason I would like to implement this option is to eliminate Charge-Back!

A 24 hours delay reduces Charge Backs and Disputes! So Admin Approval should be a key feature or option that anyone could select when they first log into Membership Pro! Right now alot of things are done with plugins, but this feature should be a part of the core component without someone needing to jump from the core component to the plugin section.

All I am seeking to do is make sure no ones gets into my system without paying! The Admin Approval option will enable me to process every membership request and make sure payment has been made, and its not a hit and run: stolen charge card!

Can you please outline the steps I would have to take in order to Approve a Membership Request, before a person can gain access to my website! Because others will read this post please be as clear as you can in your reply!

Thank You In advance...

Hi Charles

In Membership Pro, the subscription record will be approved automatically when payment is completed. If you want to manual approve, the way is config Joomla to require admin approve the account before it is active

Go to Users -> Manage, click on Options button in the toolbar, set "New User Account Activation" to Administrator

After that, it should work OK

Regards,

Tuan

The problem that I see is with Membership Pro where is designed to automatically approve a subscription plan once payment is made! Instant access is where most Charge back come from due to fraud (stolen charge cards). By adding this feature into Membership Pro it can prevent any conflict due to this simple fact Membership Pro is automatically approving a membership request on good and bad orders.

I already have Administrator selected in Joomla but does Membership Pro overrides this option by automatically approving a new subscription! In your reply you used "Should Work" meaning you don't really know if Joomla Option will catch the bad orders that Membership Pro let through?

So let me ask you this when will you be adding this option into Membership Pro? And before you say anything let me just say 3 others components on Joomla.org that have a rating between 90 and 100 have this manual (Admin Approval) option in their membership component. They may lack all of the features or plugins Membership Pro offers but the core feature that can save website owners money is there!

Now in the past I used Membership Pro on a free site so it didn't matter if someone was using someone else email or address because there wasn't anything a hacker could steal! But now as I switch over to a fee based system I need to limit me risk but getting the payment first and then making sure banking or charge card info is good... And instant access will place my venture and again I will use it again My Venture at risk of heavy Charge backs if I give a person instant access.

My own software allows me to check and verify the information a person gives me! This is why I make sure a person fully understand or post on my site that it will take between 24 hours and 48 hours between a membership request is process, not approved! If you look on Joomla.org you will find other components that have this option in their program. I don't think it would be fair to state your competitor names in this post so I will leave that up to you to check.

But it would be nice to have this option built into Membership Pro.

Approval Options:
Manual (Website would have to Approve a Membership Request or Subscription Plan)
Automatic (Membership Pro would Automatically Approval a Membership Request or Subscription Plan)
None (Membership Request or Subscription Plan will be placed on Hold.. This is a "Do Nothing" option)

A "Do Nothing" option allows a website owner to build up it membership and then charge a large group of people at one time. So instead of having one or two people in your site, a website owner could have thousands.

But I do hope you add the Manual Approval option to Membership Pro....


Thanks in Advance...

Hi charles

1. Yes, I will consider adding for this option in future release of Membership Pro. However, not within this month as this month, I am trying to finish migration tool to allow migrating data from other death membership extensions (Akeeba Subscriptions and AEC ) into Membership Pro. It has highest priority for me for now

2.

I already have Administrator selected in Joomla but does Membership Pro overrides this option by automatically approving a new subscription! In your reply you used "Should Work" meaning you don't really know if Joomla Option will catch the bad orders that Membership Pro let through?

=> I know what I said. As I mentioned, Membership Pro always activate the subscription. However, if you set activate account to "Administrator " like I mentioned, the subscription record in Membership Pro will still be active. However, the Joomla Account associated with that subscription will be blocked until you approved that account manually

So although the subscription is active, the user account is still not active, so users will still not be able to login until you approve the user account, so they could not access to restricted resources on your site

That can be used as a workaround for now. With my current workload and plan, I think we can only have the approve option in about 6 weeks from now

Regards,

Tuan

Just a thought.

Could you create duplicate plans that are hidden from subscription that your paid content is linked to, rather than the plan that is purchased. Then when you are happy that payment is received, your approval process is to move them to the plan that is attached to the content. Just an idea.

Jonathan,

No! It would create more problems that it solves..

The process has to be clean... One way is to get the plugin to check to see which option the admin has set. And during the payment process notice would then be given that your account has been setup and once it has been approved by the site Administrator the enduser will receive their username and password or they will get full access to content!

The option above does not let the enduser know what is going on! All they know is that they paid for a subscription plan and they don't know why they can't access the content or website. And yes I can post the process on the payment page but very few people really take the time to read anything. Resulting in tons of emails asking why they can't log in...

Charles

If I was an end user of your site I'd think your 24hours smacked of manual - inefficient processes. You will lose business from this model and from people asking for refunds because it wasn't instant. I'd be curious if you get more stolen card chargebacks than you loose from turning customers off.

I don't know what content you are providing, clearly the organisations I work with have much more civillised users - having never had a charge back from a stollen card in over 10 years of on-line payments.

However, assuming your model is correct and a 24hour delay discourages this then as you can control the content of emails from Membership Pro you can state that it will take up to 24hours to activate the account in the email that is sent with the invoice. Put it in bold near the top. And I may be wrong (been a while since I used it) does Joomla not email when the activation is switched on. Or as suggested have a hidden plan and move them from the one they subscribed to to the hidden one that actually gives them the special power to see the content.

My system works just fine! And the process I outlined won't turn any consumer away because of the type of products and business services my system offers... And since I am not starting a new website but have a very large membership base trying to find the right payment component is the challenge!

While Membership Pro is an option PayPlan, OSE and RSmembership are other Joomla components we are testing in order to make sure we will be able to integrate one of these products into our system. And if not we will just build our own! And for the record we had people wait more than 45 days before they got access to our beta system! So having them wait 24 hours to 48 hours is not going to stop a single person from giving us their Charge Card! And if you read my post you would have notice this small fact: Membership Pro is not being uses to verify people charge card, I have a program that will permit me to do that all I am seeking to do is find a reasonable working component that will handle the payment process, until my ordering program come online...

And please be careful outlining hidden menu options, because what you think is hidden is really not, if you know what you are doing. That hidden Menu Link is the easiest to hack! Been there done that for a client...

I don't believe the hidden plan was a hidden menu. You set up plans as follows:

Plan A - available for the user to select and "subscribe" - with an access level of all
Plan 1 - set as only available to those in say the super-administration group. So it doesn't matter if your user somehow works out what link to create to subscribe to it - they will get a access denied response.

When User subscribes to Plan A they do whatever authentication you are asking for that will magically prove that whatever dodgy userbase you have haven't passed you some dodgy card details, and when you are satisfied you give them access not to Plan A, but to Plan 1. Plan A gives no user rights to the content they want, Plan 1 does. If you believe you can hack that - prove it - because that would be a system vulnerability.

And if you read my post you would have notice this small fact: Membership Pro is not being uses to verify people charge card, I have a program that will permit me to do that all I am seeking to do is find a reasonable working component that will handle the payment process, until my ordering program come online...

Ermm... no you didn't! In the first post you don't mention any additional software and in the second you say "My own software allows me to check and verify the information a person gives me! This is why I make sure a person fully understand or post on my site that it will take between 24 hours and 48 hours between a membership request is process, not approved!"
I think you need to clarify what your payment processing actually is...

Are you:
- (A) taking payment through a MembershipProPaymentPlugin? Where that plugin will check with a payment gateway the validity of the payment but are then concerned the validity at a later stage will prove false and the payment be refunded? So you have then added a secondary layer of "protection" which you manually do something with?

- ( replacing the gateway with your own software instead of the gateway?

- (1) looking for some way to hold the account pending while doing one of the above but without having found a way to automate the checks yet?

If its A - some solutions have been proposed for you.
If its B - your gateway shouldn't confirm payment so the transaction will be pending just like if I submit the wrong card details to my gateway?
If its A + 1 then do you need the card details for your checks?
If its B + 1 then you could use offline payment and custom fields to gather the card data if you are then manually processing it? (That's a minefield I wouldn't go near - storing card details!)