Below is a transcript of the PMPro Dev Chat held today. Lots of good discussion on the present and future of PMPro. Next dev chat will be Thursday November 13th at 2pm EST. Join us!
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(1:49:09 PM) strangerstudios: Hello! Chat starting in about 11 minutes.
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(1:52:18 PM) tubiz: HI NiKV
(1:52:42 PM) NikV: Howdy @tubiz
(1:53:14 PM) tubiz: Doing great NikV
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(1:53:49 PM) NikV: Same, interesting to see a PMPRO dev chat 
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(1:58:41 PM) strangerstudios: Anyone have suggestions for theme music? Album or Spotify playlist to stream?
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(2:00:27 PM) strangerstudios: It’s 2pm!
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(2:00:35 PM) Erik1:
(2:00:36 PM) strangerstudios: I’m going to start. It’s IRC so people can see the history.
(2:00:43 PM) tubiz: Hi Jason
(2:00:46 PM) circ-user-b4VDD is now known as kristopher
(2:01:13 PM) strangerstudios: Going to be playing Pinkerton album by Weezer myself.
(2:01:24 PM) strangerstudios: feel free to join in
(2:01:28 PM) kristopher is now known as kristophercargil
(2:01:41 PM) kristophercargil is now known as kriscargile
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(2:02:32 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll try to keep it to an hour, but will chat as long as it seems useful.
(2:02:38 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll post the transcript to our blog afterward.
(2:02:47 PM) strangerstudios: Topics for discussion:
(2:02:47 PM) NikV [cca9860b@gateway/web/freenode/ip.204.169.134.11] entered the room.
(2:02:47 PM) strangerstudios: Recap of recent core development and addons.
(2:02:47 PM) strangerstudios: PMPro v1.7.15 and v1.8
(2:02:47 PM) strangerstudios: MemberLite Theme v2.0
(2:02:47 PM) strangerstudios: Or anything YOU want to talk about!
(2:03:23 PM) strangerstudios: We’ll have another chat next Thursday at 2pm. Hope to make this regular.
(2:03:56 PM) strangerstudios: In reality I need more devs to help with maintaining PMPro and the addons and support the people using it. So that’s my main goal with the chats… to help you guys help the PMPro ecosystem.
(2:04:06 PM) strangerstudios: Anyone have other things they would like us to get to? Feel free to yell out.
(2:04:30 PM) strangerstudios: Hi tubiz
(2:04:52 PM) jordannovak_: So I’m new to pmpro – I recently used pmpro for a custom membership integration with WP and Infusionsoft — the one thing I would like to see in pmpro is a simple API for adding / managing users from other plugins without hacking calls to the database
(2:05:00 PM) tubiz: I am more concerned about the new payment gateway class, that is meant to be released in v2.0
(2:05:36 PM) strangerstudios: Can everyone in the chat say hi, state their real name and how we might know you (your website/etc)?
(2:05:44 PM) nocanvas: I am interested in your BWAWP book – and PMPros usability with the JSON API, and how it would work with phonegap built apps as well
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(2:05:59 PM) strangerstudios: Great idea Jordan. Would be really useful.
(2:06:08 PM) tubiz: Creating a payment gateway in PMPro isn’t easy one need to copy files manually into the plugin not sure if this has fixed because its been a while a followed the development on GitHub. But will get back to it
(2:06:08 PM) roddarn: Hi
(2:06:11 PM) jordannovak_: I’m Jordan Novak, partner at Novak Solutions LLC, www.novaksolutions.com
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(2:06:28 PM) chrisdillon1: Hi, Chris Dillon @ wpmission.com
(2:06:29 PM) strangerstudios: (lol my kids started listening to Disney songs on Spotify and took over our account. That Weezer album is a little depressing anyway.)
(2:06:31 PM) NikV: Hi! I’m Nikhil. 15 year old WordPress developer. Nik.techvoltz.com
(2:06:33 PM) Ferris_TheOnline: Hi – RS Ferris – TheOnlieMagic.com
(2:06:47 PM) kriscargile: Kristopher Cargile, hipaa.com
(2:06:49 PM) strangerstudios: @Tubiz have some news RE the gateway stuff from 2.0
(2:06:53 PM) tubiz: Hi am Tunbosun a WordPress developer from Lagos, Nigeria. www.bosun.me
(2:06:54 PM) nocanvas: Hi I’m John, WP developer, used , created streaming video site Udaya.com with PMPro
(2:06:58 PM) sjolshagen: Hi. Thomas Sjolshagen – eighty20results.com/strongcubedfitness.com – using the plugin to manage gym memberships.
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(2:07:41 PM) strangerstudios: @nocanvas, noted RE JSON API
(2:07:45 PM) Erik1: Erik Bertrand here, basically a freelancer on the side, with a day job at Dyn (http://dyn.com) focusing on email delivery systems. Been using PMPro for a single site so far since April or so, just launched at http://www.nhmade.com. Relatively regular member forum participant, mostly asking, but trying to help here and there!
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(2:08:14 PM) sjolshagen: Interested in v2 progress (specifically, multiple memberships per user as I’m thinking it’d be really interesting in the context of upsells etc.
(2:08:30 PM) sjolshagen: A fellow NH based developer Erik1?
(2:08:46 PM) Erik1: indeed!
(2:08:47 PM) strangerstudios: Hi, Erik! Thanks for your help on the forums.
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(2:08:56 PM) Erik1: great to “meet” you all
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(2:09:12 PM) strangerstudios: Everyone feel free to ask questions whenever.
(2:09:25 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll try to briefly go over some PMPro and addon updates right now.
(2:09:37 PM) nocanvas: Congrats almost on 200k downloads (its at like 199,999)
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(2:10:22 PM) strangerstudios: 1. Version 1.7.15 is just about ready to go out. It has a ton of bug fixes, especially for Stripe and Braintree gateways. In particular I’m just testing an update to the Stripe integration to handle cases where people upgrade existing subscriptions. Old versions could result in extra payments made when upgrading. Need to fix that well without breaking everything else. Should be out next week.
(2:11:05 PM) strangerstudios: 2. FYI almost all of the PMPro addons have repositories on my GitHub page here https://github.com/strangerstudios?tab=repositories
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(2:11:12 PM) strangerstudios: Not all of them make it to the PMPro website.
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(2:11:36 PM) strangerstudios: Updates to pmpro-series recently with email updates. Update to pmpro-toolkit which helps you enable/disable some debug things on dev sites.
(2:12:08 PM) strangerstudios: PMPro Media is an interesting one to swap out Amazon S3 links (and eventually other third party media links) to protect them.
(2:12:14 PM) tubiz: @strangerstudios why aren’t some of the plugins on the WordPress plugin directory. If not for anything at least for the automatic updates that the WordPress plugin directory offers
(2:12:46 PM) Ferris_TheOnline: Thanks for the Git Hub link!
(2:12:58 PM) strangerstudios: @tubiz RE why plugins aren’t on the WP repo. There is a kind of standard progression from a plugin only used on certain sites, to a plugin on GitHub, to a plugin on GitHub with some docs on PMPro, to a plugin in the repository.
(2:13:10 PM) strangerstudios: I don’t like to put a plugin in the WP repository until it’s ready for end users to use easily.
(2:13:22 PM) strangerstudios: but I hear you RE easy updates
(2:13:33 PM) strangerstudios: Thanks for the congrats.
(2:13:34 PM) Erik1: maturity in that way is key, agreed
(2:13:56 PM) Erik1: maturity pretty much equals adoption
(2:14:07 PM) strangerstudios: There have also been a lot of updates recently to the prorated payments gist http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/2013/07/prorated-payments-with-paid-memberships-pro/
(2:14:09 PM) Erik1: or supports it, I mean
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(2:14:31 PM) strangerstudios: So if you’ve been using that maybe take a look. If the old code is working, let it go. But the new code fixes some edge cases and works on old versions of PHP/etc.
(2:14:54 PM) strangerstudios: Cool. Any general questions on v1.7.15 or addons before i move on?
(2:15:41 PM) strangerstudios: Ok. RE v2.0…
(2:15:57 PM) strangerstudios: the v2.0 on github is actually quite far behind v1.7.15 right now. I need to merge recent updates into it.
(2:16:09 PM) tubiz: Noticed that.
(2:16:11 PM) strangerstudios: Once I do that, I’m going to solidify the gateway updates there and release that v2.0 branch as v1.8
(2:16:24 PM) strangerstudios: which will be all of the v2.0 updates, minus the multiple memberships per user functionality.
(2:16:40 PM) strangerstudios: But then I’ll be able to work on that on a more stable level … kind of focus in on that instead of the other stuff in 2.0.
(2:16:49 PM) strangerstudios: 1.8 should be out in Novemember.
(2:16:52 PM) strangerstudios: 2.0 … still ?
(2:17:29 PM) strangerstudios: I’ve been putting off merging recent fixes into 2.0, but need to. Now it’s going to be a bit of a nightmare. But managable.
(2:18:11 PM) strangerstudios: Moving on (feel free to chime in on things I’ve passed… and remind me if I miss a questions)
(2:18:28 PM) tubiz: Will like to to work on payment gateway for PMPro. Adding a new payment gateway should be a breeze
(2:18:28 PM) strangerstudios: We are almost finished with the beta version of the v2 of our MemberLite theme.
(2:18:52 PM) strangerstudios: @tubiz the v2.0 code makes it a lot easier. Once 1.8 is merged up, let’s work together on it.
(2:18:56 PM) sjolshagen: Not wanting to rathole the discussion, but re v2: What’s the thinking on compatibility with some of the workarounds that are deployed (per suggestions in the forum) against v1.x in support of ‘faking’ multiple memberships. Will you, for instance, let us transition memberships w/o breaking existing gateway subscriptions?
(2:19:30 PM) nocanvas: What is the Memberlite theme
(2:19:31 PM) tubiz: @strangerstudios ok. Iss there a link to the MemberLite theme?
(2:19:34 PM) strangerstudios: @sjolshagen RE backwards compatibility, specifically with work arounds for “faking” multiple memberships. I expect that the work arounds will be compatible.
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(2:19:51 PM) strangerstudios: The old “one level per user” stuff will still be possible with PMPro and will be the default.
(2:20:10 PM) strangerstudios: And we plan to have a kind of detection in place so if you aren’t using multiple memberships per user features, PMPro acts in a slightly different way.
(2:20:13 PM) strangerstudios: if that makes sense.
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(2:20:32 PM) strangerstudios: users with 1 subscription from current PMPro, will just have that 1 subscription in v2.0 and will be able to add additional subscriptions alongside it.
(2:20:51 PM) strangerstudios: The MemberLite theme is a theme we made to work specific with Paid Memberships Pro and for membership sites in general.
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(2:20:59 PM) strangerstudios: There is an old version of it on the paidmembershipspro.com website.
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(2:21:16 PM) strangerstudios: It’s old and out of date. Don’t use it. Here’s the repo: https://github.com/strangerstudios/memberlite
(2:21:30 PM) NikV: So, does it need fixing up then?
(2:21:33 PM) strangerstudios: v2.0 is a rewrite and is way better.
(2:21:41 PM) strangerstudios: The old version is out of date style wise.
(2:21:55 PM) strangerstudios: and kind of in the way people typical do theme things in WP these days (it’s like 4 years old)
(2:22:12 PM) NikV: So member lite is in beta, does that mean it’s close to launch?
(2:22:16 PM) Erik1: side request for the pmpro forums: would be great to see a list of topics you as a user has started
(2:22:23 PM) strangerstudios: yes. close to launch.
(2:22:37 PM) NikV: gotcha
(2:22:40 PM) strangerstudios: we call it a beta to get other people testing it out to see if there are bugs on server setups or with plugins/etc
(2:22:50 PM) strangerstudios: but will be mostly feature complete and has everything you’d expect in a premium theme.
(2:22:54 PM) strangerstudios: you’ll be able to use it.
(2:22:57 PM) NikV: Are there more themes in planning?
(2:23:24 PM) strangerstudios: Although memberlite isn’t a “framework” in the way that something like Genesis is, you’ll be able to make child themes with it.
(2:23:25 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios Think it will (really) nice if we had some way of mapping say a Stripe customer ID to one or more of the v2 membership levels. That way we can (in the background) transition away from having multiple individual levels for each of the fake multi-level combination levels created to a single base level w/add-on memberships.
(2:23:29 PM) strangerstudios: And we might for membership niches in the future.
(2:23:48 PM) strangerstudios: I think some other developers are interested in doing that too and I invite people to do it and we can work out the business side of it.
(2:24:32 PM) Guest59751: Questions: Is threre a GUI planned for the register helper anytime soon?
(2:24:40 PM) strangerstudios: @sjolshagen: Noted. And that is the idea of the v2.0 multiple membership levels per user. It’s really hard to do that ina general way without breaking everything else. though. which is why it’s taken so long
(2:25:08 PM) strangerstudios: RE a GUI for the register helper. It’s not on our current roadmap.
(2:25:09 PM) Erik1: +1 Guest59751
(2:25:22 PM) Erik1: I realize the GUI would be a massive undertaking
(2:25:31 PM) strangerstudios: I realize that it would be useful, but our stance is that we like having the flexible developer tool vs a less flexible end user tool.
(2:25:43 PM) strangerstudios: Also with our business model (the plugin is free) it’s hard to make it worth it for us to do that.
(2:25:48 PM) strangerstudios: But I’m warming up to it a bit.
(2:25:57 PM) strangerstudios: Would definitely help someone else who wanted to work on it.
(2:26:01 PM) Erik1: makes sense
(2:26:18 PM) Erik1: I would really, really like to see improved user search and reporting/export functionality, especially with the increased use of usermeta fields esp. with register helper
(2:26:32 PM) strangerstudios: RE the GUI, the main thing I think about is that every time I add a new feature to the fields in Register Helper, it would take 4x as long if I had to work with the gui and then the gui would get unwieldly after a while
(2:26:46 PM) strangerstudios: but something simple for 80% of cases would probably be really useful for people.
(2:26:46 PM) tubiz: @Erik1 @Guest59751 pls can you explain more about the GUI for the register helper. Maybe I can take it for a spin.
(2:26:55 PM) Erik1: we basically don’t use the Members List page, instead going with a slightly customized Users page, with a plugin to include usermeta among the searched fields
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(2:27:22 PM) strangerstudios: Can you guys shelve the RH GUI discussion for after 3pm?
(2:27:24 PM) strangerstudios: but please have it
(2:27:32 PM) strangerstudios: last thing RE memberlite unless there are questions….
(2:27:33 PM) Erik1: best to take offline, yeah
(2:27:44 PM) Guest59751: ok by me
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(2:27:55 PM) strangerstudios: With the release of the theme, we’ll be releasing a new “support license” for that theme and some of our other addons… maybe v2.0
(2:28:20 PM) strangerstudios: The support license will come with the $97 PMPro membership on our site.
(2:28:59 PM) strangerstudios: The theme willbe fully functional without the license, but we’re going to add “bugs” and notices in the WP dashboard for people to get a license.
(2:29:17 PM) strangerstudios: Purchase membership, get a # on our site, enter it into a settings field on the theme and the notices go away.
(2:29:18 PM) Guest59751: Sorry i came late but are you making your own theme for use with pmpro?
(2:29:25 PM) chrisdillon1: bugs = nags, right?
(2:29:28 PM) strangerstudios: nags
(2:29:33 PM) strangerstudios: yes that’s the word I was looking for
(2:29:57 PM) strangerstudios: guest, yes. We’ve rewritten the Member Lite theme (maybe I can tweet a screen shot after the chat) and will be releasing a beta next week.
(2:30:09 PM) chrisdillon1: let me know if you need bugs
(2:30:13 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios: Just – please – don’t be as painful about it as WPMUDEV.com is …. (shudder).
(2:30:19 PM) strangerstudios: The nags are meant to be a very light way to encourage mroe honest users of the software to give us money basically.
(2:30:53 PM) strangerstudios: The nags won’t be very obtrusive, and actually it will be very easy for developers to turn them off.
(2:31:07 PM) strangerstudios: I plan to keep all code open source and on GitHub and in the WP repo when possible as we do now.
(2:31:25 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios: Oh, cool. Good news.
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(2:31:55 PM) strangerstudios: define(‘PMPRO_LICENSE_NAG’, false);
(2:32:01 PM) strangerstudios:
(2:32:05 PM) tubiz: that nice.
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(2:32:35 PM) strangerstudios: MemberLite and PMPro Media (after an update soon) will be the first things to include our license nags.
(2:32:47 PM) strangerstudios: Going to put them in PMPro itself as long as we can do it without being removed from the WP repository.
(2:32:49 PM) strangerstudios: I think we can.
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(2:33:12 PM) strangerstudios: Will hopefully get more $ into us so we can hire people to maintain the code base. It’s getting to be a bit much for me.
(2:33:32 PM) strangerstudios: Okay. Going to get into some of the questions from the start of the chat unless people have any questions about that.
(2:34:07 PM) strangerstudios: > JordanNovak: I would like to see in pmpro is a simple API for adding / managing users from other plugins without hacking calls to the database
(2:34:18 PM) strangerstudios: This makes a ton of sense!
(2:34:53 PM) strangerstudios: If you’d liek to start a forum thread or Google Doc or something so we can wax about that after the chat (or a bit now) that would be great.
(2:35:01 PM) strangerstudios: Give me an idea list of functions/APIs and we can try to work them in.
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(2:35:51 PM) strangerstudios: > Tubiz: I am more concerned about the new payment gateway class, that is meant to be released in v2.0
(2:35:53 PM) tubiz: @strangerstudios or better still can you start a development roadmap for PMPro on Trello.
(2:36:06 PM) strangerstudios: @tubiz good idea.
(2:36:10 PM) strangerstudios: We have one we use internally.
(2:36:14 PM) strangerstudios: I can clean it up and make it public.
(2:36:30 PM) tubiz: That will be nice, releasing it to the public
(2:36:33 PM) strangerstudios: Does my early chats about the 1.8 release answer things about the gateway parts of v2.0.
(2:36:54 PM) strangerstudios: That has been ready for a while and held up by the other stuff. I want to get it out there so new gateways can get added more quickly.
(2:37:21 PM) strangerstudios: Personally I want to work on some of the bitcoin gateways (although Braintree and I think Stripe will allow you to accept bitcoin somehow… not sure if that already works with our current integration with them)
(2:37:28 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios: Think so. It seems like you’re basically revamping the gateway infrastructure in v1.8 in prep for v2. Is that accurate?
(2:37:33 PM) tubiz: Yes it does, hope there won’t be need to edit core files again when adding new gateways via plugin
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(2:37:54 PM) strangerstudios: the “v2.0″ branch on GitHub has updates to the gateways so that all of the gateway-specific code is in the gateway classes themselves.
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(2:38:05 PM) tubiz: @sjolshagen @strangerstudios I believe the gateway class is being rewritten
(2:38:08 PM) strangerstudios: So when you add a gateway, you can do it in one class file (and included libray files)… or from a plugin/etc
(2:38:12 PM) strangerstudios: so you don’t have to update the core plugin.
(2:38:19 PM) strangerstudios: that work has been done.
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(2:38:27 PM) strangerstudios: just need to merge in the recent fixes into the 2.0 branch.
(2:38:34 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios: Meaning we can simply extend the base gateway class?
(2:38:43 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll need to make docs for it too. (I think I have a blog post about it)
(2:38:49 PM) strangerstudios: Yes!
(2:39:04 PM) strangerstudios: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/2014/06/payment-gateway-api-updates-live-pmpro-v2-0-development-repo/
(2:39:06 PM) strangerstudios: some ifno there
(2:39:28 PM) strangerstudios: > nocanvas: I am interested in your BWAWP book – and PMPros usability with the JSON API, and how it would work with phonegap built apps as well
(2:39:35 PM) strangerstudios: Nocanvas, can you elaborate?
(2:39:44 PM) strangerstudios: What kind of things do you want to do with the JSON API?
(2:40:04 PM) nocanvas: Just curious if it will be compatible to make an IOS app
(2:40:06 PM) strangerstudios: FYI we have a couple methods available through the XMLRPC API: https://github.com/strangerstudios/paid-memberships-pro/blob/dev/includes/xmlrpc.php
(2:40:08 PM) nocanvas: With phonegap
(2:40:09 PM) tubiz: Will be waiting for the merge of the recent fixes to the 2.0 branch so that I can help out if need be with the payment gateway class.
(2:40:31 PM) nocanvas: Or to create an Entirely Angular.js frontend for the Database
(2:40:35 PM) strangerstudios: People have used those XMLRPC APIs for phone apps
(2:40:38 PM) strangerstudios: to check if someone is a member/etc
(2:40:54 PM) strangerstudios: I actually an not up to date on the JSON API stuff. I think it exposes core WP functionality.
(2:40:55 PM) nocanvas: Do you have any examples of PMPro powering an IOS app?
(2:41:14 PM) strangerstudios: It’s probably as easy as it was for the RPC stuff to add our own JSON APIs. Would just need to know what use cases etc to build around it.
(2:41:36 PM) strangerstudios: We’ve worked with people. Wish I remembered the app names to (or if I had permission) to share them.
(2:41:42 PM) strangerstudios: One that does some integration is ThinqGolf
(2:42:05 PM) strangerstudios: They pull user information from WP and check membership levels through a custom API actually. They built that before our XMLRPC API was in.
(2:42:38 PM) strangerstudios: NoCanvas, give me your Twitter handle. I’ll send a tweet to see if anyone is doing it and would get in touch with you.
(2:42:54 PM) tubiz: @nocanvas @strangerstudios I know a lot of things are being worked on making PMPro more better, but I believe having a REST API endpoint like pmpro-api will really be nice instead of using the XMLRPC API.
(2:43:13 PM) strangerstudios: I agree.
(2:43:34 PM) strangerstudios: As much as possible, I want to stick to the WP standards. When their standard is in place for JSON (it’s pretty close now I think)… we’ll use that.
(2:43:44 PM) nocanvas: Yeah Im hearing 4.1
(2:43:55 PM) strangerstudios: > sjolshagen: Interested in v2 progress (specifically, multiple memberships per user as I’m thinking it’d be really interesting in the context of upsells etc.
(2:44:00 PM) strangerstudios: I talked about progress a bit.
(2:44:12 PM) strangerstudios: RE upsells, we’ve been getting a lot of requests for “one click upsell” type functionality.
(2:44:37 PM) strangerstudios: technically, once someone’s Stripe/Braintree account is setup, the WP site can charge any amount to that card that they want basically.
(2:44:49 PM) strangerstudios: And so can push through a charge after checkout like that. (One time offer! Act now!)
(2:45:13 PM) nocanvas: That would be great
(2:45:15 PM) strangerstudios: Having the upsell a separate membership level would make it really easy to manage then.
(2:45:42 PM) strangerstudios: With Stripe and Braintree, even though you can make charges without reauthenticating a credit card, we don’t allow that in PMPro core.
(2:45:54 PM) strangerstudios: Mostly to keep it compatible with the other gateways.
(2:45:58 PM) sjolshagen: @strangerstudios: True. My use case is a bit specific to a brick & mortar business w/memberships used for monthly recurring payments to book appointments, etc.
(2:46:07 PM) strangerstudios: And partly because I don’t like giving site owners tools that can get them into too much trouble.
(2:46:08 PM) strangerstudios:
(2:46:37 PM) strangerstudios: Anyway, we plan on keeping the requirement of checking out again and entering CC again for each new subscription in v2.0.
(2:46:55 PM) strangerstudios: But it would be a next logical step to just use the card on file/etc. And we’ve done things like that custom on some setups.
(2:47:03 PM) strangerstudios: > sjolshagen: Think it will (really) nice if we had some way of mapping say a Stripe customer ID to one or more of the v2 membership levels. That way we can (in the background) transition away from having multiple individual levels for each of the fake multi-level combination levels created to a single base level w/add-on memberships.
(2:47:09 PM) strangerstudios: I think this has been asnwersed too.
(2:47:15 PM) strangerstudios: > Erik1: I would really, really like to see improved user search and reporting/export functionality, especially with the increased use of usermeta fields esp. with register helper
(2:47:46 PM) strangerstudios: RE reports, if you start a forum thread envisioning a report I can help you to create it.
(2:47:52 PM) strangerstudios: and if it’s good, we can put it in the plugin.
(2:48:12 PM) strangerstudios: I want to fix the reports we have (the lifetime value and cancellation calculations are way off for most people — some fixes for those in the v2.0 code)
(2:48:23 PM) sjolshagen: Not an issue for me. It’s more that I’m looking for a way to let users add membership services at a later point, merge their payment (cost) into a single monthly payment. Have to be able to time limit & expire one of the membership levels w/o expiring all of them (unlike now).
(2:48:24 PM) strangerstudios: RE user search, let me know what you are thinking here.
(2:48:28 PM) strangerstudios: We’ve done some custom things for folks.
(2:48:32 PM) Erik1: cool – I’ve been giving some thought to this; shouldn’t be real tough to create/enhance a reports/export page that lets you choose from usermeta fields, enter a value, basic operators, etc.
(2:48:52 PM) strangerstudios: RE “merge their payment (cost) into a single monthly payment”
(2:49:00 PM) strangerstudios: we’re planning on the v2.0 multiple memberships to be separate subscriptions.
(2:49:04 PM) strangerstudios: makes it easier to manage.
(2:49:11 PM) strangerstudios: vs one merged subscription.
(2:49:15 PM) sjolshagen: Use case is fairly simple: User signs up for level 1, then 4 months later wants to add level 2 to their membership. Level 2 is a 6 month membership.
(2:49:34 PM) nocanvas: What about the ability to extend a users membership to the end of the month once they cancel?
(2:49:37 PM) strangerstudios: it would be one stripe customer and multiple subscriptions on it
(2:50:14 PM) strangerstudios: RE extending vs cancelling https://gist.github.com/strangerstudios/6169167
(2:50:44 PM) nocanvas: woot! thanks
(2:50:49 PM) strangerstudios: Erik, so like a form to select which fields to include in an export.
(2:51:04 PM) strangerstudios: FYI if you have register helper fields, set “memberslistcsv”=>true in the options to have it included in the export
(2:51:10 PM) Erik1: that, too — setting filters, and choose output fields
(2:51:21 PM) Erik1: not necessarily looking for an uber interface here, though
(2:51:39 PM) Erik1: yes, definitely aware of that – it’s more the filtering
(2:51:45 PM) strangerstudios: First step would be to spec that up in a doc somewhere we can share.
(2:51:49 PM) strangerstudios: then figure out what would be involved.
(2:51:56 PM) Erik1: yeah, agreed
(2:52:04 PM) strangerstudios: for custom exports, I often tell people to do the work in excel instead of coding something in WP
(2:52:16 PM) strangerstudios: I can see why they would want something like you are talking about though…
(2:52:25 PM) strangerstudios: just stating my default stance on it though
(2:52:55 PM) Erik1: our use of PMPro isn’t so much a “pay for content” thing
(2:52:57 PM) strangerstudios: if you need a custom report/export for one customer/install though. bring it up on the forums and I’ll help you through
(2:52:58 PM) strangerstudios: it
(2:53:01 PM) strangerstudios: we’ve done it a bunch for folks.
(2:53:16 PM) strangerstudios: Yeah. lots of people use PMPro to track offline memberships.
(2:53:28 PM) strangerstudios: Anyone else have questions? About anything?
(2:53:32 PM) chrisdillon1: Q: Noob here with one PMPro install under my belt. Other than practice and getting up to my knuckles in the code, any tips on becoming a PMPro pro?
(2:53:35 PM) Erik1: thanks. our use is more of an online membership profile thing. you pay, get an online profile the public can search, etc.
(2:53:42 PM) Erik1: so there’s a lot of metadata to search for, etc.
(2:53:57 PM) strangerstudios: ah
(2:54:21 PM) strangerstudios: if you haven’t found the directory module of the register helper yet: https://github.com/strangerstudios/pmpro-register-helper/blob/master/modules/directory.php
(2:54:25 PM) strangerstudios: can be a good starting point
(2:54:34 PM) Erik1: it’s for a “buy local” site, helping mostly small vendors get their name out there
(2:54:46 PM) strangerstudios: If anyone here is a freelancer and would like to get on our /developers/ page, submit an application here http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/developers/
(2:54:55 PM) Erik1: we didn’t go with the directory piece, but are using the rest. it’s live now at http://www.nhmade.com/members
(2:54:56 PM) strangerstudios: and/or tweet me your name to look for the submission to process it and get it on there.
(2:55:03 PM) strangerstudios: Cool. Thanks for sharing. I’ll check it out.
(2:55:22 PM) nocanvas: @jason – at one point or another I got approved for the developers page but it never went through
(2:55:32 PM) strangerstudios: Thanks for the heads up. I’ll get you added.
(2:56:10 PM) strangerstudios: RE tips on becoming a PMPro Pro… hmm…
(2:56:17 PM) Kx: I’d just like to add that it would be awesome to see PMPro get more involved in the login process. PMPro is involved in the entire customer experience except login. I know we don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but it seems to fit nicely.
(2:56:17 PM) strangerstudios: Use the member forums.
(2:56:18 PM) strangerstudios:
(2:56:20 PM) tubiz: @strangerstudios I have already submitted the application twice but I haven’t gotten a reply yet
(2:56:23 PM) strangerstudios: Ask anything. We’re nice.
(2:56:27 PM) strangerstudios: And actually I want to do more training stuff.
(2:56:32 PM) nocanvas: I have one nagging question – anytime I copy my site over to a staging server, or a new hosting plan
(2:56:39 PM) nocanvas: What are the chances it will charge people twice
(2:56:43 PM) strangerstudios: So designate some of this time to go over things. Maybe a webinar/screenshare to go through some standard customizations/etc.
(2:56:46 PM) nocanvas: or notify them twice etc?
(2:56:49 PM) strangerstudios: Let me know if you are interested in that kind of thing.
(2:57:00 PM) strangerstudios: @tubiz We haven’t really been processing them lately.
(2:57:08 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll look for yours too
(2:57:12 PM) strangerstudios: Good to know the form still work though.
(2:57:22 PM) chrisdillon1: cool, thanks
(2:57:30 PM) strangerstudios: @nocanvas whenever possible don’t copy over users and membership accounts.
(2:57:42 PM) strangerstudios: the pmpro-toolkit plugin on GitHub has some tools to prevent emails and cancellations
(2:57:51 PM) strangerstudios: but there are a few places you can get into trouble
(2:58:00 PM) nocanvas: Ok, and is there a definitive guid to transferring hosting
(2:58:17 PM) strangerstudios: If a membership is set to expire, it can expire on the dev site and senda real cancellation notice to the gateway to cancel a real subscription
(2:58:21 PM) nocanvas: Maybe could help make one, I dont want to feel “stuck” on whatever server I’m on
(2:58:49 PM) strangerstudios: > I’d just like to add that it would be awesome to see PMPro get more involved in the login process. PMPro is involved in the entire customer experience except login. I know we don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but it seems to fit nicely.
(2:58:54 PM) sjolshagen: @nocanvas raises a good point. Any chance you could support both test & live keys for the payment gateways & then have a define() in wp-config.php (or something similar) to set the default gateway to ‘test’ or ‘none’ (to avoid those issues)
(2:59:02 PM) strangerstudios: I like using Theme My Login. Which is why I didn’t add the login stuff.
(2:59:07 PM) strangerstudios: I know there are problems with that.
(2:59:18 PM) chrisdillon1 left the room.
(2:59:18 PM) strangerstudios: We might add something super lightweight to the plugin.
(2:59:22 PM) strangerstudios: I think MemberLite has some stuff.
(2:59:38 PM) Kx: My biggest concern is the dependency on another developer or forcing customers to figure their way out of the wp-admin.
(2:59:39 PM) ***Erik1 would love someone to take over TML!
(2:59:51 PM) strangerstudios: If you have test API keys setup on the dev, then it will try to use those to cancel the subscription and will fail.
(2:59:55 PM) Erik1: it does work pretty well in most cases, though
(2:59:58 PM) strangerstudios: but sometimes your PMPro settings get copied too
(3:00:24 PM) strangerstudios: Not sure what you meant by guid to transfer.
(3:00:48 PM) sjolshagen: More the case of when the site gets copied to staging (to refresh), the existing live keys may cause trouble… (at least for me).
(3:00:49 PM) strangerstudios: RE TML, you mean Jeff is looking for someone to take it over?
(3:00:50 PM) nocanvas: sorry, Guide
(3:01:07 PM) strangerstudios: I might take him up on that. We’re kind of invested in it.
(3:01:24 PM) nocanvas: Like a step by step guide to copying your PMPro to a new web host
(3:01:31 PM) strangerstudios: RE Guide for transfering, no but that’s a good idea. I might have blogged about it once.
(3:01:35 PM) Kx: Some of the recent reviews indicate that it has been abandoned. Not sure how they arrived at that, but it was concerning.
(3:01:50 PM) Kx: (TML)
(3:01:52 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll try to get something posted. pmpro-toolkit is meant to help with that
(3:01:58 PM) nocanvas: I’ve had tons of problems with my particular install with caching etc, and have had to transfer it about 4 times (mostly because of WP-ecommerce, not because of PMPro)
(3:02:19 PM) strangerstudios: I’ll try to get in touch with Jeff
(3:03:01 PM) squarelines left the room (quit: Quit: squarelines).
(3:03:06 PM) strangerstudios: I think some of the “abandon” stuff might just be that Jeff (like me recently) doesn’t spend a bunch of time doing free support ont he forums there
(3:03:09 PM) nocanvas: I use an AJax login widget and display it on a page instead of theme my login by the way
(3:03:28 PM) nocanvas: I think the best solution is never have the user on the wp-admin
(3:04:08 PM) squarelines [~squarelin@c-76-115-32-193.hsd1.wa.comcast.net] entered the room.
(3:04:16 PM) strangerstudios: yeah
(3:04:56 PM) strangerstudios: Did I miss anything? Going to wrap up the official chat.
(3:04:59 PM) strangerstudios: But feel free to keep chatting here.
(3:05:38 PM) tubiz: @strangerstudios when are you going to merge the latest changes into the v2.0 branch
(3:05:48 PM) squarelines: Thanks for having this – it has been really helpful and informative!
(3:06:17 PM) strangerstudios: Thanks! No problem.
(3:06:22 PM) strangerstudios: Going to have another one next Thursday.
(3:06:31 PM) strangerstudios: Maybe switch day of the week. But try to keep them at least every other week.
(3:06:33 PM) Erik1: I’ve been considering writing a case study; a healthy series of those would help a lot of people, I think
(3:06:40 PM) strangerstudios: Yes for sure!
(3:06:43 PM) strangerstudios: I can feature it on our site
(3:06:47 PM) strangerstudios: and direct traffic back to you.
(3:07:03 PM) squarelines: That sounds great. We’ll be here for ‘em – keep everybody posted if you change the bat-time or bat-channel!
(3:07:05 PM) Erik1: a page with reference sites would be great, too, even without case studies
(3:07:07 PM) Kx: Thanks for hosting htis.
(3:07:16 PM) Kx: Thanks for the awesome plugin, btw.
(3:07:20 PM) strangerstudios:
(3:07:53 PM) Erik1: I just want to get in that my experience with PMPro has been fabulous. It really is a developer’s membership system. I’ve had a few hiccups and needed clarification, but I’ve not run into anything I couldn’t do with it
(3:08:04 PM) Erik1: very satisfied with the choice!
(3:08:25 PM) sjolshagen: Ditto on @Erik1’s experience!
(3:08:27 PM) strangerstudios: Thanks, Erik! That is our goal. Need to make the final hand off to all of you guys now.
(3:08:39 PM) Kx: Same here. Easy to use. The only thing, which is being worked on, is the multiple memberships per customer.