Requiring users to pay for features on the forum

You can provide special privileges to the paid members of your forum by using user group permissions. For example, you can allow only paid users to upload photo albums, post attachments, or profile pictures. You can require that posts by normal users be approved before being displayed on the forum and allow posts from paid users to bypass approval.

First, ensure that Paid Access is enabled on your forum. You can enable Paid Access by following the directions below.

1. Log in to your Website Toolbox account.
2. Click the Settings link.
3. Click the Paid Access link.
4. Provide your PayPal Email Address.
   

   Note: Make sure that it is a Verified PayPal Business Account. This is the PayPal account email address where the funds should be sent when a user makes the payment. If you do not have a Verified PayPal account, you will need to create a new PayPal account and connect it to a bank account. Because PayPal verifies that you have connected an active bank account, it may take up to 48 hours to become verified.

5. Enable the Donation option if you wish to accept the payments as donations.
   Or,
   Provide the Cost.
6. Save the changes.

Once you enable Paid Access, a new user group called Paid is added in the Users section. Users who have paid will automatically have Paid as their additional user group. That will give them all the permissions of their primary user group (probably General) plus the permissions of the Paid user group. To restrict a feature to paid users only, restrict permissions for the General user group and give permissions to the Paid user group.

If you restrict access to your entire forum or specific categories using the options available in the Settings -> Paid Access section, the paid access payment page will automatically be displayed when a user tries to access those areas. If you have not restricted access to any areas and have only restricted access to features, you will need to post an announcement with the link where users can purchase a paid access premium subscription. The link address is https://FORUM_DOMAIN/?action=paid_access (Replace text “FORUM_ADDRESS” with the URL of your forum.)

Related Articles:

• Paid Access Overview
• Paid Access Best Practices
• Requiring users to pay to access the forum
• Requiring users to pay to access a category

If you still need help, please contact us.