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General Overview of CBSubs |
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Written by Nick A.
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Overview
The CB Subscriptions System - CBSubsTM - is a commercial offering that can transform your CB powered website into a money making machine.
CBSubsTM allows you to setup different Subscription plans that your website members can subscribe to. Subscription plans have many different attributes that virtually allow you to support almost any imaginable use case scenario. A subscription plan can be created to have a specific duration (ranging from minutes to years), a price tag (any amount in any currency) and can be used as the basis to gain access to specific content (sections, categories, individual articles, menus, modules, etc) and features (integration with other components). CBSubsTM handles payment process currently integrating with Paypal, Authorize.net and YellowPay. More payment gateways will shortly follow. Offline payments are also supported.
CBSubsTM is extremely flexible and expandable. There are many integration plugins already in place that allow CBSubsTM to integrate with the following extensions/functionality:
- CB fields (ability to modify the value of CB fields of a member based on subscribed plan)
- DOCman (ability to add/remove members to/from DOCman groups based on subscribed plan)
- Remository (ability to add/remove members to/from Remository groups based on subscriber plan)
- idevaffliate integration
- PAP (Post Affiliate Pro) integration
- Google Analytics integration
- jAwards integration
- Virtuemart integration
- GroupJive integration
- Plan image functionality (ability to assign an image to plan subscribers)
- Folder protection integration (add/remove members to htaccess and passwd files based on subscription plan)
- Email marketing functionality (ability to send personalized email messages upon specific subscription related events)
- CB field/tab protection (ability to hide or show CB fields and/or Tabs based on subscription plan)
- SQL action functionality (ability to trigger and execute specific dynamic SQL statements based on subscription plan activation/expiration)
Many more integration plugins will become available very soon and may also be developed on a professional budget basis.
Some applicable use case scenarios that can be implemented with CBSubsTM include:
- Download Subscription club cases
You can very easily setup your very own download subscription club by using DOCman or Remository and have CBSubsTM automatically add/remove members to specific relevant DOCman/Remository groups based on CBSubsTM subscription plan activation/expiration. CBSubsTM will handle everything! Payments, personalized welcome emails, group assignment provisioning, group removal provisioning, upgrades to better plans, etc. All you need to do is setup your download area and groups and count your money using CBSubsTM graphical tracking area and statistics panel!
- Content Subscription business cases
With CBSubsTM you can protect specific CMS (Joomla/Mambo) content items or content groups and make these items accessible only for paid subscribers based on specific CBSubsTM subscription plans. Members not enrolled in proper plan will encounter a (language file customizable) "You need to subscriber to view" message along with a link to the appropriate plan(s) that would unlock the protected content (article, category, section, etc) that was attempted to be accessed. You can also specify to show only the introduction part of the content item (the part before the -- read more -- link). If you embed video clips in the protected content area you can use this scenario for a simple access to training material paid subscription site. All content items are protected without any Joomla/Mambo hacking! Everything is cleanly designed and coded. No shortcuts, just good professionally designed and implemented solutions!
- Advanced Membership business cases
CBSubsTM can be used to create subscription plans that give extra privileges to members based on their subscribed plans. Example: enable gallery tab for paid members, give extra quota based on advanced subscription plan, provide profile-blog or profile-wall tab to paid members, give authoring privileges, protect access to specific components (e.g., only paid members can submit directory items). The possibilities are endless.
- Provider - Consumer type use cases
You can use CBSubsTM to provision various provider-consumer type sites. Example: student-teacher sites where teachers and students have different tabs/fields and student cannot see other students grades but teachers can see all student grades. Model-agency sites, where agencies have different profile tabs than models, models cannot see other model pictures but agencies can see all model pictures. Also extra pay may permit models to upload more pictures. There is alot of flexibility and you should be able to make CBSubsTM work for your specific use case.
You can also specify Donation plans and Merchandise plans with CBSubsTM.
A Donation plan, is in reality a single payment plan with no applicable duration period and no real extra privileges. A donation plan may be used multiple times by a single user. A Merchandise plan is similar to a donation plan but it is tracked differently by CBSubsTM and it is usually used to give access to a download item.
You can of course combine all three CBSubsTM product types (Subscription, Donation, Merchandise) on your website. Example: Joomlapolis has a documentation subscription plan, a donation plan and a MyCommunity template Merchandise plan.
CBSubsTM is a commercial plugin for CB, which is proprietary encoded, and licensed, in order to provide continuous system-integrity check for enhanced security, allow for top support and continued development as a mission critical component of your site.
The CBSubsTM solution is extremely flexible and its configuration options are many. Hopefully this overview does it justice and has given you enough incentive to further investigate CBSubsTM features and posibilities. And if your specific use case cannot be satisfied, you can request a professionally sponsored feature addon extension or integration plugin.
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More about CBSubs |
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Written by Beat
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Memberships pay you back!
CBSubs allows you to make your site pay for itself and for your work building your community:
CBSubs allows your members to pay you for your site
CBSubs is fully integrated with CB and all its processes and workflows. It allows your site members to choose their memberships, donate and buy products from your site in an integrated workflow.
CBSubs allows you to handle multiple memberships
CBSubs allows to handle multiple memberships, donations and products for each user, allowing for up-sales, upgrades, optional or mandatory memberships, and automatic user account expiration.
Handle your social memberships automatically
Extend your registration process with new workflows, including selection of plans and payments for membership, donations and products within your registration form. Propose fields at registration which depend on the plan chosen, allowing for different profiles depending on subscription plans subscribed.
Fully integrated and tailored for Community Builder
Integrate the plans, donations and merchandises sales into the Community Builder registration page and on user's own profile.
Donations and products too
CBSubs integrates all features needed to manage your social memberships, donations and merchandise sales for your community:
Collect donations
CBSubs allows collecting donations for multiple causes by using multiple plans. You can fix donation amount, make a list of suggested values, have a free amount field and set minimum and maximum donation amounts, avoiding donations which don't even cover collection charges.
Sell products online
You can sell merchandises online, either downloadable electronic items in combination with a documents manager (DocMAN and Remository supported by integration plugins), or products, services, and any other items. Many integrations allow to automate the electronic delivery.
Combine subscriptions, donations and merchandises in single sales
CBSubs allows you to combine any kind of item in a single sale, allowing easy cross-sales, and a single checkout for the member. Often subscriptions, donations and merchandises sales are done by different components, requiring separate checkouts, which considerably lower the probability of joint sales. This is a real winner feature of CBSubs and helps dramatically raise your sales amounts, specially within your social community.
Propose options with children plans appearing web-2.0-way when user selects main plan
We call this the "sales doubler": when the user selects a top plan, CBSubs can unveil sub-plans as options or up-sales using a smooth web-2.0-transition in the browser. This allows proposing to the customer special options, deals, and other goodies, which allow raising the average sales-amount by easily 20-100%, depending on the offering.
Accessible
Although CBSubs uses web-2.0 techniques, it remains accessible to every user, as it is properly marked up, HTML and CSS W3C-compliant, and works just fine without javascript too.
Control profiles by plans
Give differentiated profiles to members depending on subscriptions and allow different views of profiles depending on subscriptions:
Give specific registration pages
You can now have specific fields on the registration page depending on plan chosen. Fields will appear and disappear smoothly depending on registration plan chosen.
Give premium profiles to users
You can now give premium profiles-features, tabs and fields to premium members depending on their plans. You can offer 2 or more types of members
Give premium profiles views
Views on profiles, as well as visibility of tabs and fields can be limited by plans.
Adapt the profiles to your memberships needs
The above features allow you to adapt the user profiles to the type of memberships on your site.
Control profile tabs and fields in detail
Each member profile field and tab can be controlled in details, thanks to extra parameters shown in CB by CBSubs.
Can be used in combination with Privacy plugin
You can even combine CBSubs with the CB Privacy plugin, allowing members to control the privacy and visibility of fields and tabs.
Protect access to content
CBSubs allows you to give premium access and content to your premium members.
Give premium access to your site articles, sections, categories
CBSubs Content plugin allows you to sell premium access to your premium site content. CBSubs integrated access control for Joomla is a clean implementation without any joomla or CB hacks for Joomla 1.0 and for Joomla 1.5. You can control each individual article, section or category, and select to protect full articles, or still show the introduction text, with a "Subscribe to read more" link which will automatically show only the plans allowing to access the particular content.
Give premium access to specific components
Offer premium functionality to premium members: Same as for articles, specific components can be fully protected by CBSubs plans. Applications are only limited by number of available components on Joomla or develop your own.
Control modules displayed depending on subscriptions
You can determine specific modules showing only to members subscribing specific plans, and thus change the appearance of your site depending on subscriptions. The CBSubs module allows you to display current memberships and upgrade and renewal possibilities at all times.
Control menu access by subscriptions
You can even control access by menus, requiring users to upgrade for accessing specific menus.
Control access by any URL parameter for unlimited flexibility
Finally, for total fine-grained access control (for example to forum sections) you can control access by url parts, and also to specific apache folders for downloads. More integration plugins are being written every week.
Commercial plugin with commercial license
CBSubs is sold with a commercial license as a plugin to Community Builder, which is free and open-source - This allows offering a professional-grade solution to many new Internet-marketing needs for your own social network.
15+ CBSubs integrations plugins in addition to 120+ CB plugins exist!
CBSubs is a powerfull social memberships management framework, which is highly extensible and much extended. Over 15 CBSubs integration plugins already exist, and new ones are added every week. Soon the API will be available and many example implementations too, allowing you to make best use of this incredible new-generation E-commerce framework.
Extend CBSubs reach with integration with all main Joomla extensions
You can extend CBSubs integration with all main Joomla extensions already, and more are to come, or developed on request.
Leading Joomla paid subscriptions system
CBSubs quickly became the leading paid subscriptions system for Joomla, with revolutionary features, and is actively developed with new features to respond to community demands.
CBSubs Team released plugins
CBSubs Team develops and makes plugins available too. For now, all of them are included with CBSubs.
SQL integration plugin with substitutions for unlimited custom integrations
Most integration can be done through database-queries triggered by plans activations and expiries. Many examples already exist in the forum, and more are being added often.
Main features at a glance
- Works natively with all flavors of Joomla
- Extended registration – add membership plans choices, donations, and merchandise sales to registration application
- Allows CB approval workflows specific to plans chosen:
- Optionally confirm email before or after payment,
- Optionally approve users before or after payment: all of this is configurable by plan.
- Control fields and tabs availability depending on plan.
- CBSubs module displays memberships and upgrade and renewal possibilities, with direct links,
- CBSubs module can randomly changing advertisements to register, renew, or upgrade plans.
- Very powerful backend: Create unlimited plans of any type, payment gateways and accounts.
- Browse subscriptions, sales, payments, donations, merchandise sales,
- Draw statistics graphs,
- Import memberships,
- Configure detailed invoicing are all there.
- Extend CB profile with CBSubs subscriptions.
- All front-end elements are language ready and can be modified or translated as needed.
- Outputs are W3C compliant for HTML, CSS and Javascript.
- Usability and Accessibility has been a key concern during design and implementation. Many usability tests have been done:
- Any interrupted process can be caught up at next logical step. For instance, someone registering and not paying will be presented with the payment to be made at next login.
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Demo Video |
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Written by Nick A.
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Demo Video
CBSubsTM development started already years ago, and got first presented publically at Joomladay - Switzerland 2008 by the CB and CBSubs architect and lead developer in person, Beat, that was well received by the audience: remember, this was some months before first CBSubs 1.0.0 release. Now there is even more inside. Best is to take a license to evaluate risk-free during 30 days thanks to our Money-back Guarantee.
Duration: 30 minutes.
Format is: Quicktime MP4 H.264 for best quality/bandwidth ratio, you might need a browser plugin which is available for download here. Enjoy!
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Plan Attributes |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM Plans
At the core of each CBSubsTM activity there is a CBSubsTM Plan involved. A Plan is basically a way to describe an offering. It has a number of attributes that further characterize it.
When creating a CBSubsTM Plan one must first decide the type of product that is offered. The product type can be one of the following:
- User Subscription
A 'User Subscription' plan is basically a service offering. It has a price tag associated with it and a validity period. Examples: 3 month access to template downloads for 20 Euros, 12 months access to expert forum for 100 Euros, etc.
- Merchandise
A 'Merchandise' plan is a one-time offering of a product entity. It has a price tag associated with it but no validity period. Examples: purchase our MyCommunity template product for a single website for 20 Euros, download our software package for 49.95 USD, etc.
- Donation
A 'Donation' plan describes a one-time event where the associated price tag can be fixed or left open for the end-user to decide. There is also no validity period associated with a donation.
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Payment Gateways |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM Payments
Payment Gateways are used by CBSubsTM to handle payments over the Internet. Currently, the following payment organizations are supported:
- Paypal
- Authorize.net
- YellowPay
- Offline
- Dummy (for testing)
More payment gateways will be added soon. To inquire about adding a new payment gateway please contact the CBSubsTM team.
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Statistics |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM Statistics
The 'Statistics' panel of CBSubsTM provides a very nice reporting mechanism for your CBSubsTM activities.
There are currently 2 report groups: By day of week and Free query. Both groups support filtering based on many relevant values and status and of course by period (from - to).
Sample reports follow:
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Importing |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM Import
The 'Import' panel of CBSubsTM is used to batch assign (import) specific website members (based on various criteria) to specific CBSubsTM Subscription plans.
There are basically four import options supported:
- File containing single line of comma separated userids for which subscriptions should be created (for one specific plan, one plan status and one activation date)
- File containing multiple lines of userid, planid, status, subscription date strings.
- All users from a given CMS ACL group (e.g., registered, author, etc)
- All users from a given CBSubsTM subscription plan
This is a very powerful function that should really help you convert your current CB 1.2 website into a paid membership site.
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Currencies |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM Currencies
The Currencies panel of CBSubsTM gives you up-to-date exchange rates that will be used by CBSubsTM to convert currencies during the payment process. This information is seamlessly downloaded daily from the European Central Bank.
Sample currency exchange rate follows: |
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Testimonials |
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Written by Nick A.
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CBSubsTM is already in use on many websites and we are happy to share with you some of the 'success' stories:
Our service offering needed a powerful "subscription" and "membership" type function. We looked at all the available GPL and Commercial products on the market that semi-fit our needs. They all lacked in one way or another, in meeting our needs. Which quite simply was a registration system that allowed us to charge for subscriptions, restrict content and allow our community a 'single-sign on'. NOTHING we found met that need except CB Subs.
CB Subs is one of the best extensions for Community Builder AND Joomla I have seen. It is very stable, easy to use and install. It does have a small learning curve, but this is in part do to the flexible nature of the product. As I can see there are nearly infinite combinations of products, services and subscriptions you can offer.
I strongly recommend CB Subs for your next membership or subscription based project. Don't mess around with the other extensions, do it professionally and right - get CB Subs.
SalvusSystem.Com
Tom Canavan
I can only recommend Community Builder to anyone that is looking for an easy and yet sophisticated way to build a community driven portal or community hub. Community Builder is developed and maintained by a professional team of experts. Even though the software is highly complex and flexible it runs absolutely bug free with a proven stability track record.
The brand new Community Builder Subscription System brings the core product to the next level and transforms your website into a fully driven e-commerce platform. We use this extension and the plug-in on our production live site. The system, once set-up, is unbelievable in its use as you can simply do anything with your community that you imagine to do.
If your are serious with your e-commerce website and you are looking for a product that is (1) stable and reliable, (2) flexible and customizable, (3) maintained, supported and easy to use and extend, then Community Builder and the new subscription system is the best choice.
www.showcast.de
Ivo Downes | Master of Business Studies
Director | SC Models (Model Promotion Agentur)
I started using an early beta of CBSubsTM in 2008. Installation was simple, and updates have always been flawless. I have a pretty non-standard "subscription" business - a farm, and CBSubsTM made it easy for me to enable my customers to register for their plans, pay online, and upgrade. The record-keeping is great too. I created an issue when I changed my PayPal primary email address, and it was easy to determine who hadn't paid using the CBSubsTM back-end interface. I am using CBSubsTM again in 2009, and off to a great start!
www.Gracefultech.com
Ken Lyle
I tried free ACL and subscription programs in hope of integrating with my CB installation. They required hacks to my Joomla install, seemed complicated to configure and didn’t offer all of the things that I found myself wishing for. Not that the free components should offer it all but if the free versions were as such, I figure that the paid versions would be even more so. I concluded that if I was about to pay for such a utility then CB Paid Subs would make the most sense as it would obviously completely integrate with my CB installation by default and, having spent a lot of time developing and becoming comfortable with it, it was an easy choice. The plugin is amazing and the result has not let me down. Working through the set up was easy and intuitive. I have been able to move forward with the project that I've been working on with complete confidence!
client.accountantswebdesign.ca
Tom Kenyon
Partner/Developer
In 2008 I started a fully managed Joomla website service called Simplweb. I
wanted to make Joomla easier for non-technical users. We were asked by many
customers to create a membership package that could allow paid
subscriptions.
The options for Joomla 1.5 native subscription extensions were limited, but I
heard from Beat about a new Subscription extension, CB Subs that they
were developing to be used with Community Builder.
I had worked with Beat and "Nant" before, and I knew their code was top
notch, so I became part of their beta program and we used CB Subs to offer to
our customers. Over the last few months we have worked with our Simplweb
customers to launch powerful subscription websites ranging from learning how to
use email for marketing, to networking clubs about property and real estate.
With such a huge range of type of subscription websites, only CB Subs has been
capable of meeting these diverse needs.
Quite simply, CB Subs has set the standard for flexible and powerful
subscription websites for Joomla. Nothing else even comes close.
Barrie North is the
CEO of Simplweb, and the author of the #1
selling book on Joomla
I have been using Joomla and CB for a few years now and the biggest headache I experienced was the lack of a good membership component. There were plenty of components that worked but they all seemed to involve hacks to the core code. This is a nightmare when it comes to upgrades!
I was fortunate enough to be approached to update a client site from Joomla 1.0.x with CB, OSCommerce (hacked), and some customized databases. I like a challenge but then I realized that one of the custom databases was a manual membership system. The client was looking to upgrade to Joomla 1.5 and reduce the amount of manual intervention his staff were involved in.
Luckily I had been reading up on the CB Subscriptions plugin and realized that I could probably assist as a tester. It was one of the best choices I have made. The CB Subs plugin has happily managed to cope with 10,000+ users with 6 different levels and upgrades based on specific plans.
Even importing 2,000+ live subscriptions from the customized database was made easy by the built in import feature of CB Subs.
Not only has it coped with the demands of the client it has actually made life easier for the users as CB Subs controls access to lots of different site elements. This includes access at component level, section, category and article levels, as well as accessing specific URLs. Now they can amend their own Sobi2 entries without waiting for approval from a moderator/admin.
Added to all of that the CB Subs plugin has allowed us to convert the online shop to Virtuemart and it even adds users to the correct shopper group depending on the plan they subscribe to.
I haven't even started to explore the potential of the affiliate elements of the plugin but I bet it has some fantastic potential if the rest of the application is anything to go by.
Based on working with the team; seeing my client's satisfaction; I will be using this software on my own membership site later this year.
David Goode
www.3cellhosting.com
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Your Next steps |
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Written by Beat
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We offer a 30 days money-back guarantee on CBSubs. Simply use "Contact us" menu with your Joomlapolis username.
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