This documentation serves as a simple guide for new users to kick start PayPlans with a general assumption that PayPlans is already installed on your website and you are just excited to kick start your subscription site with PayPlans.
Create Plans
Plans are the most essential part of PayPlans and are what users are looking to purchase on a subscription based site.
Creating a plan with optimum pricing and features that resonate with your target market is a very important part of setting up PayPlans. So we will take a quick look at the basics of plan creation in PayPlans.
In PayPlans, there are 5 different types of plans based on its expiration type. They are Forever Plan, Fixed Plan, Recurring Plan, Recurring + 1 Trial, and Recurring + 2 Trial.
When creating your plans, you need to carefully consider which of these expiration types you will be using on the site. Normally, subscription based sites would have a few plans with different prices, expiration types, expiration time and various other different features which you can configure.
Take your time to looks at the various options when creating a new plan and try to understand what they do. Feel free to experiment with them as well so that you are aware of the features that your plans can have.
Creating Payment Gateways
Payment Gateways are required to generate an integration with a Payment Gateway to collect and process payments. You should create and setup at least one payment gateway on PayPlans to start off and add more down the road. Other than setting up several different payment gateways, it is also possible to create a few instances of the same payment gateway with varying configuration.
When selecting a payment gateway to setup for PayPlans, you have to consider whether the payment gateway is widely accepted(depending on your target market), the currencies involved, and whether you are able to setup an account with them so that you can at least test it out first.
Creating Applications
Apps are optional in PayPlans, but utilizing them makes PayPlans workflow more sophisticated and smart. Some apps provide integration with other extensions on Joomla, some adds access control on the site, and some just further enhance PayPlans workflow.
It is best that you go through the available apps on PayPlans by clicking on the New button in the apps section and determine the apps that suit your needs. You may need to experiment for a bit to find the apps that you would use eventually.
Menu Creation
Let's say you have created plans, setup payment gateways and apps, but the question now is how to display the plans on the site’s front end?
The answer is simple. You just have to create a menu item for a plan display page. To do this, head to Joomla's menu items section and create a new menu item type Display Plans/Groups if you do not already have one. Set this menu item on a visible menu and your users should be able to see this in the frontend.
Notifications
In today’s service driven scenario the winning edge is defined by how connected you are with your users or how much awareness your users have about your services. In context to this don't you think if you could mail your users personally on every specific occasion, such as writing a guiding mail to a new user or notifying an existing user about an offer if he renews his plan before the expiration of his subscription.
But the dilemma - There are too many users for you to connect personally. Now, if PayPlans can automate this process…. What if I say you would be able to notify your users by sending them a predefined message template on a pre defined time.
Yes, PayPlans Notifications is capable of doing that. You just have to setup notification rules from PayPlans backend Notifications section(click on New).
After selecting a notification rule which you want to create, a configuration screen will pop up on your screen. It will allow you to customize your email message.
Lastly, after setting up PayPlans, don't forget to test out the subscription process manually from your site's front-end.
NOTE: The above only consists a part of what PayPlans have. It would be best that you go through all the options in the backend and also the entire documentation for a better insight of what PayPlans have to offer.