Order system tie in with forum?

What do you guys think? How good/bad is having an order system that also works with a forum?

I.e. I buy a product, log in to view my orders, and that login also works for the forum...

 

For sales of my ListMailPRO software I have an owners-only forum. Basically my payment routine adds them to my member database and, separately, to the forum (with the forum ID recorded in the member database so they can manage their forum details from the member area).

Works great, but isn't trivial to set up!

Hey wait.. SonicMailer? Should I be helping you?

 

Haha yes I think we might be a bit of competition Hey... I just tried your demo... that looks a LOT like our older version... ...

 

I've got a lot of clients from 2002 on who will attest that I developed ListMailPRO from the ground up.

I have seen a few rip-offs of my program but can't recall if SonicMailer was one... On the advice of a fellow businessman I didn't pursue it and instead kept putting in more features to 'stay ahead'. Did you outsource your programming?

I'd post my changes.txt but that could give you too many ideas. Others feel free to PM me if you want it.

Check the waybackmachine for "mfware.com"

Regards

 

Mine was just a comment. I especially could care less right now because ours looks NOTHING like that anymore.

I did do programming myself. I wish you luck with ListMailPRO

 

It might shoot you in the foot down the line, I would keep them seperated.

What happens when they type something in the forum that gets them banned and your script "deletes" that user. now any linkage for an Order to that UserID is gone because the UserID doesn't exist anymore.

- Just something to think about - this area i woudl definitely decouple

 

I never thought about that (That must be a BAD thing.. lol) and certainly a very valid point. But on the flipside, isn't it annoying for a customer to have to in essence create another account so that they can, for example, ask for help on their purchase?

 

Well... this is a "nice" feature, but a good way to work it is to duplicate your data so linkage is...

Nope - I got a better idea, lol, this is actually how I build my Customers and Orders... Ok - NEVER delete a customer, just change their status to "Archived" then in your CMS don't show archived status customers, but show Orders for All Customer Statuses. Also - use an OrderARchive table which tracks user informatoin "at that time" and CustomerID. This way it will have all the order info including the customer's info at that time (which is important in case they move or change email, etc... you hvae to ship to the correct address).

This way has saved my life, hehe - I got lots more eCommerce building tips if you want them, I'm on my like 15th full-ecommerce server-farm full build-out so far, lol (most in diff languages, lol)

 

Hmm.. The thing is, my current order system (in-house) needs to be replaced, and I don't want to build my own order system (mainly due to time constraints) ... and so been looking at PHPAudit and Iono... PHPAudit doesn't integrate with vBulletin, and I believe the way Iono works is "duplicating" the data.

 

Duplicating isn't necessarily a "Bad" thing. You can always run cron jobs to re-sync the data. (Although not advised)

 

As I mentioned I add a row to the member database and (3rd party) forum database upon purchase. I removed the registration function of the forum. I allow my members to update their member and forum access from the member area. So far I haven't needed to ban any users, which is likely due to access costing $195. (owners-only)

If access is free or cheap then yes, banning will come into play. To handle this, depending on the forum software (and if you're lucky...) you may be able to disable the forum account with a simple field value change.

You would of course have to create your own small script to manage your users. This script could be set up to remove just the forum entry for a registered member and the 'member area' could give a graceful message to the user that they are banned.

If you are not making a custom member area and user management scripts you may not be able to do what you like. There might be a payment script that has a plugin but I wouldn't count on it.

Regards