Hi I’m strongly considering using Discourse. I want to have a few free categories, but over time add “paid” categories that people will have to pay to access. The paid categories will effectively be courses with a community aspect.
I assume using Groups w Subscriptions is the best way to limit access.
Can I customize what an unpaid member sees in the paid category? Maybe a small container for custom HTML/CSS on top with a screenshot of the topics below. I could link to my Woocommerce website to use as a salespage/checkout, but that wouldn’t create a Discourse User (Zapier doesn’t seem to support creating Discord Users / Groups).
What’s the nicest way to post something like a course, maybe with lots of content, on Discourse? Can we have something like HTML pages? Or maybe put Course Content under a Topic or Tag? Generally I’d want to foster community/conversation and have room for people to post their own creations which could be equally valuable.
Yes - that is integrated tightly / managed brilliantly by the subscriptions plugin.
While you have a lot of control of how much folk can interact with each category, I’m afraid that visibility is somewhat binary by design: either they see everything or they see nothing (not even that it exists).
However, this can be built upon via these customisations:
using subcategories
put visible stuff in main category (or a less restricted sub-category)
put hidded stuff in a more restricted sub-category
Thank you @nathank for getting me up-to-speed on these plugins.
I was imagining Category Previews, and Advertise activity in a private category (discourse-category-lockdown) seems very cool too — especially the Google SEO aspect. I just see people having issues with Category Previews based on certain settings they’re using that I don’t understand yet, which is making it all confusing and stopping me from creating my self-hosted installation.
Honestly there’s a massive market for paywalling content, I’m surprised Discourse doesn’t make this possible with their Subscription plugin:
Show private paid Categories to all > when unpaid users click, present a description/preview of the paid content > give them an option to buy.
No need to @mention me, Discourse is smart enough to notify me of a direct reply!
It is more that use-case hasn’t been specifically addressed with a single solution. You can cobble it together from the above stuff without too much trouble though.
A guide to doing so might be helpful though. Perhaps you could put it together and share it here as you learn through the process!
Yeah, I guess I just feel that when it comes to eCommerce, this isn’t a particular use-case — more how the entire Internet works!
If I have to cobble this together, I can’t imagine what other roadblocks I’ll hit down the line. Maybe Discourse just can’t do what I need out-of-the-box. Better for free communities
Shame because I love the experience of using Discourse and wanted that for my community members.
Hi again I have a potential new solution — would this work?
Create a public category called “XYZ” that is visible to everyone by default, which links to a custom URL (in my case, a landing page on my business website), or if not, a Discourse Page). However, if the user has access, this public category is hidden and a category with limited group access appears with the same name XYZ, which contains the exclusive content (and for visibility has Everyone > See unchecked).
I assume I can have the sales pages on my website, and have a Buy button that directly links to the Discourse/Stripe checkout for the relevant Subscription/product.
Would this cause any UX issues with search results, or anything like that?
This is an interesting backup option, if I could have the Main Category link to a custom URL (or if not, a Discourse Page).
I’m strongly considering using Discourse. I want to have a few free categories, but over time add “paid” categories that people will have to pay to access. The paid categories will effectively be courses with a community aspect.
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