My "Free Registration" option isn't selectable on new user registration

Hi!

I'm having problems with new user signups tied to our Free Registration option. (This is the same schema as referred to in earlier posts by me.)

See attached for the error message I'm getting on the front end:

This error also appears on the back end when trying to add a new member and assigning them the Free Membership (but not a Subscriber or Gold Subscriber subscription).

"Free Membership" is set up as the top, parent, Plan that contains all other Plans. It has its settings as Exclusive, and it is the only plan at the top level.


The child plans of Free Membership are all paid or manually upgraded by an administrator. They're all set to be exclusive (per my earlier posts).

The Free Membership signup was working as expected until recently: When I implemented these other subscription options.

The behavior I want is that any user who wants a free account can sign up and will automatically be granted a lifetime "Free Membership" Plan subscription.

Optionally, a user can choose to add a "Subscriber" (or other) upgrade to their Free Membership parent plan, either on registration or via their profile. When one of these paid, child subscriptions expires, the user should fall back to the parent "Free Membership" plan.

All appears to be working OK with the exception of signups for new members on the no-cost, default "Free Membership" plan.

Also, if fixing this involves Plan edits and changes, can you also please highlight any gotchas or problems this might raise? (Most of my users are currently in the Free Membership plan.)

Thanks!

Here's something else I just noticed. When trying to edit a Community Builder user, I also get the same error on the back end regarding not choosing a required plan. HOWEVER, I just noticed that there's now a "None. Lifetime subscription for free" option added at the bottom of the CB user subscription field on Joomla's back end. I don't recall seeing this, and previously (before adding Subscriber, Gold Subscriber, etc.) new members would automatically be assigned to the lifetime Free Membership upon signup.

It looks like this is related to the issue. Can you help?

So I was going to try changing my "Free Membership" so it was not set to be "exclusive."

HOWEVER, is this going to mess anything up for the couple hundred users currently subscribed to Free Membership?

The "None" option as the above screen shot doesn't appear in CBSubs > Plans, so I'm guessing it's the system default. I don't recall seeing this until now ...

Your issue is due to all your plans being exclusive. You have the following setup.

Plan 1 (exclusive)
- Plan 1a (exclusive)
- Plan 1b (exclusive)

This means if you select Plan 1 you must also get Plan 1a OR plan 1b. Exclusive also means Mandatory for CBSubs. Based off the screenshot you probably should just have the following.

Plan 1 (exclusive)
Plan 2 (exclusive)
Plan 3 (exclusive)

It doesn't look like you need to use parent child plan relationship in your current usage. Plan 1 would be your free plan that they'd then be able to upgrade to 1 of the paid plans.

HOWEVER, I just noticed that there's now a "None. Lifetime subscription for free" option added at the bottom of the CB user subscription field on Joomla's back end. I don't recall seeing this, and previously (before adding Subscriber, Gold Subscriber, etc.) new members would automatically be assigned to the lifetime Free Membership upon signup.

That's always there. It's the hidden "no subscription" option, but is only available to backend and is the same as if the user subscribed without selecting a subscription.

HOWEVER, is this going to mess anything up for the couple hundred users currently subscribed to Free Membership?

No, it will have no impact on existing subscribers. That parameter is considered a "safe" parameter that can be changed without any impact to existing subscribers.

Thank you for your reply.

I changed my "Free Membership" plan (which is the top, parent plan for all others) to NOT be exclusive. However, I'm still unable to assign a user to the Free Membership plan from the back end: It displays the same "Chosen plan combination is not allowed ..." error when checking the Free Registration.

Please see the following thread to reference my CBSubs setup and how I've proceeded forward based on advice for what I want:
www.joomlapolis.com/forum/277-cb-paid-subscriptions-support/242679-advice-making-changes-to-existing-plan-setup

I did not realize the implications of how all this worked when getting things set up. The chapter in the documentation doesn't speak too much to "best practices" for plan configuration, instead saying it's complex, and site builders will figure it out as they go along. As a user of the software at this level for the first time, there's a natural tendency to conflate the parent/child relationships within CBSubs with the way they're set up in Joomla User Groups, for example.

Anyway, I welcome your best recommendation for a path forward. Do I need to reconfigure everything? How would this be best managed with several hundred member subscriptions? The other thread describes my desired setup in terms of memberships, subscriptions, etc.

Thanks again!

You changed your plan setup to the following, which is going to cause a mismatch error.

Plan 1 (non-exclusive)
- Plan 1a (exclusive)
- Plan 1b (exclusive)

This means if you select Plan 1 then you MUST select Plan 1a OR Plan 1b. Always keep in mind Exclusive = Mandatory within its parent.

If all 3 plans are meant to be independent of one another. Meaning they can only have 1 of the three at any given time then a simple configuration as follows is all you'd need.

Plan 1 (exclusive)
Plan 2 (exclusive)
Plan 3 (exclusive)

Otherwise you'd need to change your plans to the following if you don't want a child plan to be mandatory.

Plan 1 (non-exclusive)
- Plan 1a (non-exclusive)
- Plan 1b (non-exclusive)

Next if they should only have Plan 1a OR Plan 1b you need to configure conditions for that under the Workflows tab so they can't select 1b if 1a is selected for example.

In the below you describe your potential future structure.

www.joomlapolis.com/forum/277-cb-paid-subscriptions-support/242679-advice-making-changes-to-existing-plan-setup#319469

I would describe that in CBSubs as follows.

Member (exclusive)
Sponsor (exclusive)
- Gold Sponsor (non-exclusive)
Institution (exclusive)
- Gold Institution (non-exclusive)
Subscriber (exclusive)
- Gold Subscriber (non-exclusive)

There's no reason for those to all be tucked into "Member" as it complicates the setup too much. You'd just configure Sponsor, Institution, Subscriber to give the same access permissions as Member + extra. If you insist on having that setup one of the following.

Member (exclusive)
- Free (exclusive)
- Sponsor (exclusive)
- - Gold Sponsor (non-exclusive)
- Institution (exclusive)
- - Gold Institution (non-exclusive)
- Subscriber (exclusive)
- - Gold Subscriber (non-exclusive)

or

Member (exclusive)
- Sponsor (non-exclusive w/ conditions)
- - Gold Sponsor (non-exclusive)
- Institution (non-exclusive w/ conditions)
- - Gold Institution (non-exclusive)
- Subscriber (non-exclusive w/ conditions)
- - Gold Subscriber (non-exclusive)

Beats suggestion was accurate based off the information provided. You did not specifically state someone could be ONLY a Member, which seams to be where the confusion is coming from as you were clear you wanted permissions inheritance. The above should provide that, but you'll need to condition your plans since someone can't be Sponsor and Institution at the same time.