We have an open forum that also has some content limited only to members of our organization - a one design class sailing organization. I'd like to know how folks have setup to use a forum, similar to "subscriptions" so that only paid members receive benefits. Our dues are paid outside of the forum, via our class association website, so the "subscription" feature isn't really used. We have a script that sends me a message with a link that I click on to update their membership status in a forum group I've created. Our dues run by calendar year.

I setup group called "2010 Dues Paid" and have given people access to the "Members Only" forum. I add people manually to this group when their dues are paid. So some questions:

• Can I make it so that people added to this group automatically have that forum added to their watch list for new posts?
• Is it possible to have people automatically removed from the forum watched list when the membership expires at the end of the year?
• Should I use the "subscriptions" group and force renewal dates, rather than creating a "2010 dues paid" groups? (e.g. not sure what the admin or other features are I'm missing)

Finally - what kinds of things have you found to be beneficial to offer dues paying members on the forum. One of the things we will offer is discount membership / renewal in the US Sailing organization that most folks are required to join to enter many regattas.

Forum Link - running 7.5.4.2

1. No,Not in the stock code

2. Not sure. If you are currently removing them from the group I would assume they can't access the watched topics that 2010 has access to.

3. You could setup payments via mail in the subscription area of the control panel,since you are currently not using the paypal payment already in ubb. Then you just enter the payment with the duration and they will expire on their own. And they loose access automatically.

would be a modification to stock, but all doable

as for other bennys..

i typically do:

-- custom avatar
-- ability to search forums
-- custom title color
-- custom title
-- special group image like (although i modify postlist and viewmessages to NOT display them.. they make the lists looks bad)
-- image in sig
-- access to arcade (mod)
-- don't have to view ad islands (but this is a philosophy thingie)

prolly some more, but those are the highlights.

Please stand by for station identification...

Some good ideas. Thanks to both of you for the tips. I may play with the subscriptions feature more.

- Can use the PM system
- Can use the Shout Box

I tried multiple things on my site and the only one that really took off was custom titles. People that are on there a lot like to stand out.

I offer the option to hide ad islands but the only people that actually paid money for that said that they were just trying to help out the site.

"Custom titles" worked for me, too.

We have special "group images" for those members that have donated to the site/club, and they're showing in the postlist which makes things a bit busy...but I notice it doesn't do that here at UBBCentral...is this a setting I missed, or a tweak I need to do?

yes.. ubbcentral uses the custom title to do custom images.. rick (or admin type) manually sets that, since we users don't have this priv here..

what i do on my forums is edit postlist.tpl to NOT show custom images, since they don't look right ..

and viewmessages.tpl too

edit: whoopsie, i see i had mentioned that already in the post you quoted!