Just jumping in on the conversation because we would like to be able to deploy a domain subscription for schools/NIE's as well but don't want to have to deal with purging the user list or perhaps severing the user's link to the subscription service - if that is even possible.

Part of the solution may already be built into the subscription system. Step 1 would be to create the ability to easily set an expiration date for a domain service - Perhaps by being able to batch edit the transaction list like you can with assets OR create a custom configuration for expiration/duration when setting up the Domain service OR creating a function like trial duration but without requiring it to auto renew, etc.

Then you would just need to edit the template that automatically sends an email to subscribers that are about to expire. Looking at the default email templates on our site it would need to include something along the lines of:

Dear [%user.screenName%],

[% if service.DOMAIN_SUBSCRIPTION_SERVICE %]

Your subscription to [% site.domainName %] is expiring on [% subscription.expireTime | datetime('M j, Y') %].

If you wish to maintain your access, please visit [% resubscribe_url %]

Thus a custom email would be sent to people on the DOMAIN SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE with a link to a url where we could have some form of renewal portal mechanism. If they don't get the email they don't get the link to renew. I would definitely need help properly coding the if - then to produce the proper email. And not sure if there exists an appropriate renewal portal for this type of application.

Thoughts?

Kevin,

I flipped the switch a month or so ago to Enable Photo Sales, which is when I discovered the Buy Now button issue on our FTP imported photos. A quick review of our legacy photos (over 120,000 from 5 years as a Town News customer and the thousands that migrated from our prior web management system) show photo sales as "Automatic" on all the photo assets I checked. I can't say definitively that this setting was applied when I flipped the switch but I suspect it was. Our saving grace is all those old photos do not meet the resolution threshold to satisfy the photo sales requirement, so the Buy Now button never appeared. I only recently increased our export resolution from our CMS to Town News in effort to possibly take advantage of Town News photo sales, which is when the Buy Now button issue revealed itself.

When I have some downtime, and I know there isn't anyone else working on our site, I will try a batch edit on 10,000 or 20,000 of those old photos to disable photo sales and see how long it takes and let you know.

The import job setting was implemented as a result of ticket 734417.

Since you so graciously shared the price sheet perhaps I can return the favor.

1 - We had the same concern with our photos, which upload via FTP from our editorial content management system that is separate from Town News. I presume your photo import is handled by a job command set up in Blox Admin. If so, go to Blox, Settings, Jobs, and select the job that handles your photo import. On the destinations tab create an option for "disable_photo_sales" and give it a value of "1". This was done for us via a help ticket a few months back and it solved the issue of all our photos appearing with the Buy Now button despite having the Disable photo sales option selected.

2 - Early this summer the Town News unveiled a much more powerful Batch editing process that I think can essentially Batch Edit every asset you have. I believe you could designate all your existing photos to have photo sales disabled in one command - although it may take some time for the system to execute the change. See: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/releases/software_releases/article_799c45b3-cb7d-57d2-bbdd-789220833480.html

Hope that helps.

What are the "nagging bugs" that concern you? Perhaps we will want to hold off as well.

Thanks for the price sheet, that will help us compare the services.

This is a feature that we are very interested in as well. Hopefully you can tackle this soon. Any sense on the time frame for deployment?