Creating a paid discourse forum

Support
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Hi there. I’m looking for some guidance on how to set up my forum to accept paid memberships.

I have my forum set up to ‘invite only’. Is there a ‘typical’ way to set up a page to accept payment prior to setting the invitation?

I know I can set up an external page (separate from Discourse) and put a ‘buy now’ button, etc. on there, but I’m not sure how to trigger an invitation getting sent from Discourse?

I hope to learn how others have done this before I wire something together that’s not at all elegant. :slight_smile:

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I would suggest looking into the Patreon plugin in:

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Patreon is pretty easy to set up. Memberful also makes it pretty easy to set up. If you’re self-hosted and can install plugins, ProCourse Memberships 💸 is another option that doesn’t send your users to a third party to pay and log in (you’ll still need something like Stripe or Paypal to take their money, of course). Finally, if you like WordPress, it’s possible to use some WordPress membership thing and have it update groups in Discourse.

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Thanks Jay and Robin. There’s plenty of options here. I feel I have a path to follow. I’ll give a full report once I get something set up!

Mark

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Hi there,

I thought I’d circle back with an update on my paid membership site project.

I’m launching ASAP - well, I announced it earlier this week and am taking names while I get the gateway set up.

Going with the Procourse Membership Plugin. It’s installed but I’m having trouble configuring it and getting the flow working properly.

Am I correct that the plugin documentation is only available with a support agreement with Procourse? I have an email into them but thought I’d check.

If anyone has set this up before (especially with monthly and annual payment options) I’d love some pointers:

  • I set up two membership groups in Discourse and two member levels within the plugin.
  • I set up Stripe with my test keys and a test webhook.

My issues:

  • I’m currently ‘invitation only’, but not sure which settings to change in order to let people buy a membership

  • Can’t figure out how to let new members select the member level they want (annual or monthly)

  • Not sure how to test the Stripe integration, since I can’t get the ‘enter credit card’ page to show up!

I’m eager to figure this out, but am missing a basic understanding of how the plugin works within discourse. It looked nice in the demo, but making my site look like the demo is a whole other thing!

Is there a doc or thread that I’m missing?

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Usually on the github page there’s a README.md file. That eventually could lead you to this page for example, have you seen this?

https://talk.procourse.co/t/set-up-stripe-payment-gateway-in-procourse-memberships/377/3

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Hi @MarcP, Thanks for that. I’ve scrubbed through that thread many times today. :slight_smile:

That’s the reason I think more docs are behind a support contract. There’s very little on that forum other than the payment gateway posts (1 for each payment processor.)