Join us at 6:30pm on Thursday June 23rd, 2011 at The Jibe Multimedia, Inc. for our June meeting presentation: Building Membership Sites with Ubercart by Shaun Dychko.
Date: Thursday June 23rd 2011, 6:30pm (Note: if you'd like to show up earlier, let us know so we can accommodate)
Location: The Jibe Multimedia, inc., #200 - 163 West Hastings, Vancouver, BC [Map] (Buzz: #200. If the buzzer downstairs doesn't get you inside, please call 1-877-866-5423.)
Cost: There is no charge and all are welcome.
RSVP http://www.meetup.com/Vancouver-Drupal-Users-Group/
Agenda
Building Membership Sites with Ubercart
Shaun Dychko, founder of Checkmark Media, will be presenting a recipe for creating a membership site with monthly credit card billing using Ubercart on Drupal 6. Bank and Merchant Account setup will also be covered so that a Canadian merchant can bill monthly in USD using Authorize.net. User experience improvements using the Cart Links module, and a nice facebook marketing trick will also be shown. This presentation will be suitable for site builders and people new to Drupal since Shaun will try not to "speak in code" :) Giancoli Answers, which is a screencast solution manual that Shaun created for a physics textbook, will be the model for this presentation. Shaun will also give some of his first impressions of the new Drupal Commerce module and a brief comparison with Ubercart.
As well as being a Drupal enthusiast, Shaun is also a Vancouver high school physics teacher and avid traveller.
Lightning Talks
Attendees are invited to share their experience by giving a 2 to 4 minute presentation on any topic of interest to the Drupal community. If you want to use a laptop to show a website or control panel please be sure you have the necessary cable to connect to an overhead projector.
Live Streaming
If you can't make it to the meetup, we will be live streaming and recording the event via UStream.
Drupal Q&A
Join us at the pub afterwards and bring your questions on anything related to Drupal from how to do something technical in PHP to what modules are needed to implement a feature you want.
RSVP http://www.meetup.com/Vancouver-Drupal-Users-Group/
Comments
slides
Hey Everyone, here are the slides from my presentation: http://www.checkmarkmedia.com/node/8
Enjoy!
Question about recurring billing in Canadian dollars
Thanks for the excellent presentation, Shaun.
The project page for uc_recurring module is confusing. The information about what specific payment gateways work with uc_recurring is not easy to understand. PayPal WPS does not work. There's problems with role assignment. And PayPal WPP does not work since you can't save the CVV code to your website database for the next recurring fee. This is against PCI rules.
So if I understand correctly, the only payment gateway that works with Ubercart and the uc_recurring module is Authorize.net. Is it possible to bill customers with Canadian funds using Authorize.net? Isn't it a US company?
Katy :-)
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
SeascapeWebDesign.com
Seascape Web Interactive
Follow us on Twitter
CAD isn't currently possible
CAD isn't currently possible with off-the-shelf modules. If a developer is looking for a great project to get them noticed, I'd suggest considering integration with http://psigate.com/ since they're a Canadian payment processor and merchant account that supports recurring billing in both CAD and USD. Freshbooks can use psigate for recurring billing: http://community.freshbooks.com/support/what-is-auto-billing/ (notice that they don't use either PayPal WPS nor WPP. PayPal Payflow Pro is something else which is quite expensive).
By the way, for role assignment, I recommend using the Ubercart core uc_roles module, not the "Subscription Manager" (or whatever it's called) included with uc_recurring.
Thanks for the tips.
Hi Shaun,
Thanks for the tips.
I didn't use the "Subscription Manager" module. It's just a UI addon and does not add any functionality from what I understand.
I set up my client's membership subscription website back in May/June 2010 using PayPal WPS, Ubercart 2.2 and uc_recurring alpha4 (I think) and uc_roles. It worked very well for several months. In 6-7 months, my client collected $8,500 dollars using PayPal WPS as the payment gateway. Then in the Fall 2010, we started having problems with the membership role not being assigned to new paid subscribers. And the roles were not expiring on the correct dates when subscription was not renewed.
I added the Role Expiry (non-ubercart) module but this was a mistake. I ended up with 2 sets of roles showing up on the User's profile.
Since we were having problems, in Jan/Feb 2011, I upgraded to Ubercart 2.4 and uc_recurring alpha6. A few month's later, people started posting how the Ubercart update to 2.4 was breaking PayPal WPS. I read through all the threads in the issue queue. One thread says there's a patch to revert back to previous code from 2.2 so that PayPal WPS is not broken. But I couldn't find any patches for PayPal WPS on this thread.
It's obvious that the maintainers for Ubercart and uc_recurring modules are not interested in supporting PayPal WPS. I just wish I had known this back in May/June 2010.
We really need better documentation on drupal.org on the project pages to inform people about what gateways are being supported and what gateways are not being supported.
Katy :-)
www.seascapewebdesign.com
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
SeascapeWebDesign.com
Seascape Web Interactive
Follow us on Twitter
Use Authorize.net for your Drupal membership subscription site
I phoned authorize.net and they said that when you use their payment gateway you will need to charge for your products in US Funds. But the payments you collect will be converted to CAD funds so you can deposit them into your CAD bank account.
You need 2 things to process payments online:
1. Merchant Account to process credit card payments
2. Payment Gateway to link your website to your Merchant Account to accept online payments.
Currently, Authorize.net is the only payment gateway that works with Ubercart and Recurring Payments. Visit their website at http://www.authorize.net or call 1-888-323-4289 for more information.
Here's the pricing they sent me by email:
Payment Gateway Account
• Non-Refundable Setup Fee: $99.00
• Monthly Gateway Fee $20.00
• Gateway Per-Transaction Fee: $0.10
• Gateway Batch Fee: $0.25
Merchant Account (If you do not already have one)*
• Per-Transaction Fee: $0.25
• Visa/MasterCard Qualified Discount Rate**: 2.19%
• Monthly Statement Fee: $9.95
• Monthly Minimum Fee: $25.00
If you have a merchant account already, you will need to contact them to see if it works with Authorize.net. They do work with Moneris and Elevon and other Canadian merchant accounts.
For more information on how to set up your membership website with Drupal, contact Katy at SeasacapeWebDesign.com
Katy :-)
www.seascapewebdesign.com
twitter.com/seascapeweb
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
SeascapeWebDesign.com
Seascape Web Interactive
Follow us on Twitter