I'm trying to find information on how the hosting fee for each portal that
is created works.  I searched this site but I didn't seem to find anything
about it.  I have multiple portals configured and I want to start charging a
monthly fee.  I have setup the payment providers in both the hosting
settings and in each portal that I have.  My question is how does this get
trigger, when does the user pay their monthly fee?  Does this just work out
of the box or is the more to configure?  Any help would be grateful.

 

-Rob

I've started looking at this in a test installation and i don't think I can give you any definite answers. I seem to recall having set it up quite a long time ago, but I can't remember exactly how it all works. - But thinking about it I think I set up the demo portal signup section rather than the payment for hosting.

Basically as you say, you need to enter your paypal account into the Host Settings section
Then, in each portal - ie. Admin / Site Settings / Advanced Settings / Payment Settings you enter the paypal account of your client

Under the Admin / Site Settings / Advanced Settings / Host Settings you then enter the details for your portal charges.

But, I am unsure as to whether this turns on a monthly subscription system. & How do you test this when you can't change how often the payment is required? - ie. you can't set it to 1 day and then test to see if it takes the money out each day and then set it up for monthly payments. - A month is a long time to wait to test if it will ask for payments!

The expiry date, well this just sets an expiry date for access to the portal. Once it has expired and you log in as admin it doesn't give you any options for paying or clearing the expiry date.

So rather than answer your question, I've asked more questions!

I think I looked at this about 18months ago as I was setting up hosting for clients and I decided it would be easier to setup a reseller hosting account with separate installations of DNN.

I would go across to the main DNN forum and see if anyone can offer any insight as I don't think I will get much further without some core team input. Let me know how you get on and if you can provide any further information on this.

Thanks,

Lee

I have the feeling that this part of DNN is not complete. As I recall that several people were building a module (approx 18months ago) to cover this facility.

I seem to remember recently seeing on snowcovered a module which is setup for portal signups so it would probably be worth your time having a look on snowcovered as well if you don't have any luck in the forums.

Hmm... I thought this was one of the main ideas behind dotnetnuke. To Quickly build portal sites and charge a hosting fee for them.

Well i think it was originally designed to be used as an intranet system. But the main idea is to be able to easily create several portals for the one domain. The charging part however has never been fully initiated.

Let us know how you get on, thanks,