Auto Expiring User Accounts

[jimothy]

I am currently trying to modify an automated user creation script. The script currently will check for a valid email address, and then create the user after it is confirmed. But I would also like to make a trial section, where people can enter their email once, view the contents of the site, and then have that account expire after 30 days. Any ideas?

Also, if a person decided to pay for the service after the 30 day trial, would it be difficult to overwrite the email they entered for the trial (so they wouldn't get an error "That email address already exists in our database"). Thanks.

[pnoeric]

Jim-- well, to solve these problems in PHP is trivial. To set it up how you want requires more thought.

To address your two questions:

1. How do you make an account expire in 30 days? When the account is created, just stamp it with the date; every day, run a script that scans all your accounts and finds the ones that are over 30 days old. Delete them. Voila.

2. If they decided to pay after the 30-day trial, how do you overwrite? Well, if they pay AFTER, that trial account will be toast so there will be no problems. If they pay DURING the 30-day trial, you can just UPDATE their record to reflect their status as 'paid' instead of 'trial.'

Hope that helps. You should think more about how exactly you want the system to work and each action along the way; you'll find that the actual database manipulation and so forth isn't too hard. And we're here to help too...

best
Eric
http://ericmueller.org