How to: Pay to post channel entry
Development and Programming
I have a project which is broadly speaking a paid-content hotels directory / classifieds site. An advertiser needs to be able to:
1) Post their hotel / apartment details - probably in the form of a multistep safecracker form with a lot of custom fields
2) Be prompted for payment via PayPal or possibly another gateway
3) Be able to see a listing of all of their properties and be able to edit them whenever
The channel type, let’s call it ‘property’, would have additional custom fields or categories e.g. ‘Featured on Homepage’ etc only accessible to the admins via the back end. Ideally I’d probably tie an auto-expire into this also.
DevDemon’s Credits addon in tandem with Cartthrob has been suggested as a possibility, but it just seems overkill for the situation. I know there’s an EE1 Classifieds module that’s probably a closer fit but obviously not suitable for an EE2 project.
Any ideas??? Thanks
Membrr allows you to limit the number of posts per channel depending on their membership, but that’s only for subscriptions, probably not helpfull http://www.electricfunction.com/blog/membrr_1_42_released_with_arbitrary_number_of_posts_per_subscription_in_channel_protectors
Yes I’ve just used Membrr in a project and it’s great, but subscriptions is not right for this situation. Needs to be one payment per entry posted.
DevDemon’s Credits addon in tandem with Cartthrob has been suggested as a possibility, but it just seems overkill for the situation.
I wouldn’t say it’s overkill. In fact, I’d highly recommend it. It’s like ExpressionEngine in that it stays out of the way when you don’t want to use certain pieces of it. CartThrob plus EE is about $400. On a site that makes money that should be made back without much issue. Considering the great support you’ll get from the CT team, along with the flexibility of the product, I’d say give it a go.
I also don’t see why you would need Credits based on your description. Where do you see using that?
Regards, Erik
Thanks Erik, I’ve no problem with the cost and I know the CT people are highly regarded. I’ve been wanting to try CT anyway! Just not having used before, I wondered if a whole ecommerce suite was really required, and if it could really be made to work in the way needed i.e. to purchase a product (channel entry) in EE itself.
It was suggested to me that Credits would be used to buy a credit that can be redeemed for a CT product. But if I can just ‘buy’ a channel entry via CT that’s a lot simpler. I think this is the way I’ll go, and you’re the second to suggest it as the best approach, cheers!
Hey Luke, in CT we have a concept called “Purchased Items”. This feature enables you to (optionally) have CartThrob create a new channel entry for every item purchased. Even though the primary goal of “Purchased Items” is to store in depth order item data, it has the side effect of being able to “purchase” channel entries. I have seen this used in the past for creating “classifieds”, that is, entries you can purchase. It also has a feature where you can set these to have an expiration date.
The only issue I foresee is that these entries won’t be created until after the purchase, so your workflow would change to 1) make purchase, 2) post hotel/apt. details. CT is also highly extensible, so if you needed a really custom workflow (such as creating the entry first, and then changing it’s status upon purchase or something to that effect), we could show you which extension hooks you’d need to use to make it happen.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask us on our pre-sales board: http://cartthrob.com/forums
Thanks Rob, I’m sure now CT is the way to go, and appreciate your time in explaining how it works. Looking forward to giving it a spin.