Our newspaper is planning to go to a partial pay wall in a few months; one of the options we are considering is charging for archives.
Archived stories are defined as those that have the "Archive" workflow status assigned to them (we have a Rule set up that sends stories from Public status to Archive status after seven days).
At the moment, registered (authenticated, logged-in) users can read archived stories, and there is no cost for registration.
What would be the simplest way to charge per story for access to archived stories?
In other words, a pay-per-article setup ... that would apply only to stories in Archive status.
I think I've seen elsewhere that this may be possible with eCommerce ... but we are already using Ubercart on the site, so eCommerce is not an option.
Comments
We just charge an annual subscription rate
At our site, we have a separate subscribers site that shows certain articles that we put "behind the wall" and it is working out great. The subscribers site is identical to the regular site, only the special subscribers stories show up mixed in with the free content. Roughly 1/3 of our content goes behind the wall and we have had pretty good success at picking up subscriptions. I don't know if that helps your situation, but that is what works for us.
Thanks,
Brian
Check out our News Page created with Drupal at www.countynewslive.com!
Probably too complex a solution
I have a feeling that adding yet another website to our work process would prove to be too complex and too time-consuming a solution. We're understaffed and overstretched as it is. I'm thinking that Ubercart Node Access might be the way to go ... if I can find someone who can show me how to set up an automated system so that when a story goes from Public to Archive status after seven days (we have a Rule set up that automatically does this), the Node Access is also changed so that users must pay to access the story (and they should be able to access it only for a limited time ... say, 24 hours).
I can see in my mind how I'd like the system to work ... I just don't know what to do to make it reality.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer