In a recent Business Bloomer Club discussion, a user explored the requirements for building a membership site tailored for a sports league.
This site would primarily focus on collecting membership fees and signed waivers rather than traditional membership features, like gated content.
Here’s a detailed approach to setting up such a site while ensuring efficient payment tracking and streamlined user management.
Initial Requirements and Key Features
- Membership Fee Collection: A mechanism to collect annual fees, track payment status, and identify paid vs. unpaid members.
- Waiver Signatures: Capability to collect signed waivers, ideally at checkout, using an upload field or simple form integration.
- Annual Membership Status Check: A way to verify if a member has paid within a specific calendar year, crucial for sports leagues where membership validity often aligns with seasonal or annual cycles.
Suggested WooCommerce Solutions
1. WooCommerce for Product Sales and Payment Tracking
If you’re only dealing with a single annual product (e.g., “Annual Membership Fee”), WooCommerce’s built-in sales and customer management tools are perfect for tracking payments:
- Product Setup: Create a simple product to represent the membership fee.
- Order Status: WooCommerce will allow you to view purchase history and filter users based on whether they’ve purchased the membership product within a specified period.
2. Waiver Collection at Checkout
For collecting waivers:
- File Upload Field: Customize the WooCommerce checkout to include a file upload option for waivers. This can be added via custom code or plugins like WooCommerce Checkout Add-Ons.
- Confirmation Checkbox: An alternative to file upload is adding a required checkbox to indicate agreement to a waiver’s terms.
3. Tracking Membership Status with Code Snippets
To identify active memberships within a specific time frame:
- WooCommerce Functions: The function
wc_customer_bought_product()can verify if a user has purchased a particular product. - Custom Date Checks: Modify this with the additional date snippet, allowing you to check if a product was purchased within a set timeframe, like the past year or a specific date range. Reference here for checking past 365 days.
4. Considerations for Large Membership and Traffic Loads
For high-traffic events, ensure your WooCommerce store and server can handle the load:
- Caching and Optimization: Use caching plugins and optimize server settings to accommodate traffic spikes, especially around registration deadlines.
- Stock Management for Limited Memberships: If limiting membership, enable stock management but lower the “Hold Stock” time to prevent overselling during peak registrations.
This approach offers a scalable, WooCommerce-based setup, balancing ease of integration with features like custom checkout fields and customer purchase tracking. With a few code adjustments, this setup can handle high user volumes, ensuring members have a seamless experience while maintaining ease of management for administrators.
