bradybarrows

Thanks Joey_M, Sonya, and MySharona for your clarifications. Do you have any recommendations on how to force 'guests' or bots to go through something that forces them to put in an email address, name and address, to prevent creating this needless invoice?  A plugin? 

Feature Suggestion: 

Force Guests to Pay First then create an invoice. 

Currently creating an invoice when checking out and not forcing a guest to pay creates a bogus invoice with no contact information. 

8 hours ago, opentype said:

No, it is not possible to change when the invoices are being created. 

You could consider not exposing your subscriptions to guests by not giving guests permissions to buy them. 

 

Thanks. I can't wrap my head around that one. We let guests view a small portion of our website in the hopes that a guest subscribes. Is it possible to force a guest to purchase a subscription before the invoice is created? I don't see a setting for this. 

You have any idea how to force a guest to pay before creating an invoice?  I am having a huge number of guests go through the subscription check out without entering any contact information or completing the payment process using PayPal or Stripe and it creates a bogus invoice like this:  

Just now, Randy Calvert said:

Literally this entire thread is for self hosting customers to manage their Linux based server. All of this stuff is done for you transparently by IPS. 

It’s the biggest selling point for using IPS to host the site. You no longer have to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Instead you just worry about running the community and leave the rest to IPS. 🙂

To me this is a no brainer. I am so glad I don't have to know all this stuff you guys are dealing with. Huge learning curve if you self host. I guess you guys have way more free time than paying IC for hosting. 

3 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

These commands are not applicable to IPS cloud hosting. It’s for self hosted customers with access to SSH. 

Thanks. That is a relief. So what 'tools' in the initial post should I start learning to use do you recommend? Are all these tools recommended in this initial post for self hosted?  

Tools
The following are tools you can run in order to gather further data. These can be run from ssh and is only accessible for vps, cloud and dedicated servers for linux distributions.

top - Top processes (very useful for any scenario) | top is usually available in all linux OS distros by default.

top (this will constantly output your server's general status as well as top processes, default in CPU usage order)

top n -1 (same as above, but will output your first stat instead of constant loop)

Please excuse my ignorance. First, we use IPB Hosting (Invision Community hosting). The above is way over my head and don't even know what to google to understand what 'Top processes (very useful for any scenario)' means? When I ask for IC support they never ask me for this so what does this do to help me understand how this would be useful to me or support or any of the community members here?  I also have no idea what 'all linus OS distros by default' means. I want to learn if this is important and I assume, since you list towards the top, this is something I should understand. You have the time to explain all this to me?  This would be my first question since the rest of what you wrote is over the top and looks like code developer talk to me. But I want to learn. I use a Mac and have Terminal. Is it really important that I learn how to use 'htop - an interactive process viewer'??? What does this tool do?

2 hours ago, Hostingunlock said:

your solution would be to deactivate the publication before registering that those bots are like a plague that no matter how much you put security they always mock it

You probably are correct in the long run, but so far, using the word filter tool IC came up with, I have been blocking http://anything.ru and copy and pasting certain Russian words with Cyrillic letters (the word filter accepts Russian Cyrillic words) and so far the spam guest posts have dropped significantly. It was huge before using the block word filter tool. 

Do you have any idea how to reduce the number of bogus invoices created by guests who go through the subscription checkout without registering anything?  That is a huge amount of tedious work to delete. I like having the PAID subscription invoices and keep them since they have the contact data needed for registered members. I just don't like wading through forty or fifty bogus invoices that are just useless. There must be some kind of workaround without having to purchase a plugin. Every time I purchase a plugin they give me issues later. I am extremely careful about using plugins and stick with a developer who actually works with us and keeps the plugin updated. 

Wow. I was getting really worried this would happen at our site. What an amazing thread! Marc Stridgen and the IC team is great! Kudos to IC Team Support!

7 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

That is disabling the post before register. The only difference is guest posting is still allowed. Be careful as these forums may end up with spam attacks in them. 

Not sure what you mean 'disabling the post before register' but if you mean it requires a moderator to approve the guest post before it is published, that is correct. The caveat is that even when using the block word filter tool spammers and trollers find ways around this and continue to try to post their wares and narfarious posts and they have to be deleted which is a huge task for our volunteers. Using the word filter tool does cut down on this but it amazes me how they get around it and haven't figured out how they do it, but I have noticed a huge drop in guest spam posts after using this tool. The other caveat that takes up lots of volunteer time for moderation is the number of bogus INVOICES that are created by these nafarious trolls. I wish I could prevent that from happening or at least cut down the number of bogus invoices created in Subscriptions with some sort of filter. Any ideas?

On 3/30/2022 at 12:02 PM, marklcfc said:

In the past hour I’ve had around 40 spam failure to deliver messages. It’s happened twice in that hour, around 20 times within a minute, different emails in every failure.

Its happening through the post through register from what I see, but how they are doing it so fast I don’t know. Any ideas? I’ve turned it off temporarily

We don't have any issue like this because we don't require an email address for a guest to post before registration. Are you aware of this option?

There are four choices in ACP > System > Login & Registration > All New Accounts

20 hours ago, opentype said:

Why do you feel you need to delete them? 

Guests create these invoices with no contact information and they clog the invoices. I have no idea why anyone would do this but they do. I like to see the actual paid invoices and keep them of course and there are way more useless invoices from guests. 

On 4/15/2022 at 12:39 PM, Dazz said:

Where is this check at?

Which one is it? 

or this one?

On 4/15/2022 at 12:55 AM, DawPi said:

I have a mod to allow members to purchase more than one Subscriptions. More info on PM guys.:)

Please excuse my ignorance, what is a 'mod'?  Is it short for module?  Where is  'mod' in the IC control panel?

On 4/11/2022 at 4:49 AM, Marc Stridgen said:

If you allow guest purchase, there isnt really any way to reduce those unfortunately. Invoices must be cancelled first, in order to ensure it updates other areas properly

Can you give me an example of what other areas this affects so I understand this a little better?  Cancel then delete is such a tedious extra step. I want to be sure I understand the caveats of simply delete and NOT cancel. 

I just have a simple question. Guests go click on subscriptions and it creates an invoice that is pending with absolutely no contact information. I click 'cancel' since if I click on 'delete' I get a warning message to cancel before I delete, so I do that, cancel then delete. What is the issue if I just delete and not cancel?  And is there anyway to reduce the number of these bogus guest subscriptions that do nothing but take up time to delete? Any ideas?

5 hours ago, marklcfc said:

Ok applied that patch, I don't use subscriptions though

Try this: 

ACP > System > Support > Get Support > Clear System Caches

or if the above doesn't work contact IC Support <support@invisionpower.com> and be sure to use the email you used setting up your IC account or it won't trigger a support response. 

WOW!!!  Glad I read this thread. We just switched to a subscription based website after years of giving all our data away for free. I was simply browsing the IC community and found this thread that peaked my interest due to the title of the thread and had no idea this would happen to subscribers. At least I haven't offered any subscription plans using 'years' and only use 'months' so I think elonegenio's issue shouldn't happen. 

Since you guys are so knowledgable about subscriptions I just have a simple question. Guests go click on subscriptions and it creates an invoice that is pending with absolutely no contact information. I click 'cancel' since if I click on 'delete' I get a warning message to cancel before I delete, so I do that, cancel then delete. What is the issue if I just delete and not cancel?  And is there anyway to reduce the number of these bogus guest subscriptions that do nothing but take up time to delete?

Might want to read this thread. 

17 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

We cant really answer that question, as it depends on what exactly you want to achieve. However thats not what is causing the ability to upgrade at no cost. It's the fact you have "No charge" set on the upgrade part. So someone can indeed upgrade with no charge to themselves

Thanks. Changed the setting to "Difference between the purchase prices" which seems to be reasonable and works for our non profit. 

2 hours ago, Jim M said:

Typically, this is used to have different tiers of subscriptions like a Silver, Gold, Platinum thing but as long as this fits your needs, you can use it how you wish. The current settings you have would allow the user to go to the different subscription for no change in price, you will want to change that or someone would be able to purchase your monthly subscription and get the 12 month for no extra cost.

Wow! Didn't know that! So I have no idea how to 'change that or someone would be able to purchase your monthly subscription and get the 12 month for no extra cost.'  

Should I switch the 'Customers can upgrade subscriptions' to OFF and leave 'Customers can downgrade subscriptions' to ON?  

9 minutes ago, Jim M said:

If that is what your subscription is setup to perform, it would move them when they subscribe, yes.

Great. I just did a test and that is wonderful, it works. 

One more question. I have four subscription plans: 1 month, 3 month, 6 months, and 12 months. 

In the ACP > Commerce > Subscriptions > Subscription Plans > Settings > Upgrading & Downgrading

I have following settings. Will this allow a subscriber to go either up or down from their group initially purchased?

Question. I have a group designated INACTIVE MEMBERS which meant (in the past) they haven't posted for thirty days. 

When one of these inactive members logs in they should only be able to view the subscriptions page and force the user to subscribe, if I understand this correctly. My question is when they subscribe do they automatically move from the INACTIVE MEMBER group to the subscription plan group purchased?

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

Brady,

Read the text, man. It says that admins don't need to be "protected." They do need to be added to the subscription (maybe not after the patch), though.

I saw it. It's right under the version number. It's not going to be in big bold red text or anything; just look for it.

Thanks Eric. Found it. Patch works!!!! I didn't have to add my root admin to the subscription plan. Cool. 

Thanks IC support for the patch. You guys are great to fix this issue so fast!