[SOLVED] Opinion and Suggestions Appreciated for Membership Payment

[TecTao]

Overview:

 

 

I am building a membership application.  The client is charging for viewer to become a member. The payment for membership will be a recurring charge, semi annual and annually.  My approach was going to be to have the new member click on a button choice that would go to a page through Authorize.net SIM.  When the card is processed they return to the site and fill out their membership information. Pretty straight forward.

 

The Client has changed direction.

 

Now we are going to give the new member 30 days free.  Unlike most memberships where the credit card is entered but not processed for the free period, the client wants the new member to join and then after 30 days pay.

 

The membership allows the member to view projects from another membership and submit a new project to a third member.  On the landing page after the member signs in are a series of buttons to allow these searches and projects.

 

My intent is to let the new member view these buttons until the 30 day period passes.  On that date, a button will allow for purchasing.

 

My Approach:

 

In the new member table there will be a new field for payStatus. Y for paid, N for not paid.

 

When the new member has filled out the membership form and submitted, the field will insert a N and the current date.

 

My approach to handle the status would be with a series of If Else statements.

 

First, If payStatus == Y the series of buttons are viewable.

 

If payStatus == N series of buttons are viewable if the current date is less then 30 days from the signup date Else the Payment option are viewable.

 

When the payment through Authorize.net is made, the variables returned will update the payStatus to Y.

 

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Ken2k7]

Sounds fine to me, but I would use 1 and 0 instead of Y and N respectively.

[TecTao]

Ok, that makes sense.  thanks. btw, great quote...

[hchsk]

one problem i can think of, if this is a concern, is that depending on what the buttons do when clicked, say if they just bring you to a new page where the functions are done, then they could be bypassed by a multitude of methods, possibly including something as inane as an old bookmarked url. might it be a better method to check the date -= datejoined payStatus before the load of every page?

 

and if you were going to hide them with javascript? theyd still be visible in the source, allowing for bypass that way, so check server side, paystatus = 1