Allow Free Registered Users setting w/ Offline Pa

What's the proper setting for Allow Free Registered Users (without subscriptions)when we have an offline payment gateway and migrated members?

Currently it's set to Yes, and we get some people registering without selecting a payment gateway.

If I set it to No, will people paying offline be unable to register?

Will our migrated members, who don't show on the subscriptions screen in CBSubs, be unable to log in?

What are you trying to accomplish exactly? Are you wanting to allow people to register without a subscription? Do you want people to be forced to select a subscription and not be able to use your site without one? If you force a subscription then on next login of a user who doesn't have one they should be presented with a plans page to select one (please note your plans should Allow Upgrades in this case).

I think my question boils down to two questions: "is a subscription with a pending payment basket considered a free subscription" and "is a subscription without a payment initiated (basket payment says "Not Initiated")considered a free subscription"

We want the users of our site to be only registered by CB, not Joomla (already set), and to have an active or expired subscription.

We have 1800 users who are expired, who were migrated to CBSubs (mostly by Nick, using the import feature in CBSubs) and we want them to be able to log in to their website account and reactivate their subscription.

We have 470 users who are active and should remain registered. (no problem there, but I'm mentioning it in the interests of exactitude)

And there are people who haven't ever been in our club, and we want them to be able to register and to become a user only after they've selected a subscription plan, selected a payment gateway, and either created a completed payment basket because they've paid for the subscription online or created a pending payment basket payment page for cash or check payment in our offline payment gateway, called "pay at club".

We get a few people who don't click one of the payment gateway buttons, or don't click the "Submit" button on the payment screen, and we get users with no subscription as a result of that.

"is a subscription with a pending payment basket considered a free subscription"

No, it's not yet Active.

"is a subscription without a payment initiated (basket payment says "Not Initiated")considered a free subscription"

No, they've no subscription even in the Pending process.

If you've set the below within CBSubs > Settings > Global then your users will be required to have an Active subscription to login.

Allow Free Registered Users (without subscriptions): No

OK, it's now set to NO, and the result: we are still getting people who create a subscription, a basket, and a CB user record, even though they are unpaid.

The subscription and CB user record shows them as Registered Unpaid. The basket shows them as Payment Not Initiated.

The difference now: they can't log into the front end anymore, they're blocked.

BTW, the reason this is occurring is that Paypal Standard is a horrible gateway. Most people have forgotten that they opened a Paypal account, and Paypal still wants them to use it, or they "may" (in Paypal's words) get a message saying that they need to use a different credit card and/or email address.

The difference now: they can't log into the front end anymore, they're blocked.

Yup, it's working as intended. It still creates them, but it blocks them preventing login until they subscribe.

BTW, the reason this is occurring is that Paypal Standard is a horrible gateway. Most people have forgotten that they opened a Paypal account, and Paypal still wants them to use it, or they "may" (in Paypal's words) get a message saying that they need to use a different credit card and/or email address.

Matter of opinion. PayPal has and still is a wonderful and powerful gateway. It's very very simple to use and user friendly. I've used PayPal for over 5 years and haven't had a single problem with them.

A person only needs a PayPal account if you intend to offer recurring subscriptions as well. So if you only request single payments then they've no need for an account unless they really want one or already have one.

We also offer several alternatives such as 2CO (off-site like PayPal) and Authorize.net (on-site payments).