Okay I have been trying multiple different modules including:

xdonations
xasset
oscommerce for xoops

None of them I could quite figure out. What I really want it to do is this:

Guest comes to my website finds it interesting wants to join to access the forums. He then joins goes through the payment process, I will be charging a monthly fee which I have set up with paypal. Is there a module that can do this and if the member cancels it will delete there account. Also I want it to sign the user up for a username and password once they complete the payment process.

If one of the three above can do this. Can someone link me to a good tutorial (I have read all the docs and readme's that came with all three, with no luck).

Although not free, I have heard Amember script works very well for this.

well....if you have xdonations setup and working...you could just alter the templates a bit to reflect that fact that people are paying to join as opposed to donating.

xDonations allows you to 'assign' users to a group once they have donated.

So, and example of making this work for you would be:

Set site up so that registration is required to view information, leaving enough info viewable to non-registered users to convince them to register.

Have certain areas of the site available to registered users that have NOT paid. Adding little notes about what else a registered user can see if they sign up for the service....

Now...the user decides they want access to the stuff they can only see if they pay...they go to your altered donations module, now called 'subscriptions' or something similar, and 'donate' (deposit money into your paypal account). Once their donation has gone through and is recognized by the PayPal IPN, they will be automatically assigned to the 'Paid Members' group that you have created, that has access to the 'paid for' areas of your site.

You may have to check with the author of the xDonations module about altering the submission information to use a PayPal subscription instead of just payments.

**also, on a side note...you will have to manually delete the users subscription from PayPal when they cancel.

My 2 cents worth: The amember software etc. and the set-up required to make it work is perhaps a tad more involved than the above example and requires just as much 'management', as well as costing about $140.
If you are comfortable in XOOPS and or have a decent relationship with any of the many helpful xoopsers out there...you may wish to save your money. Likewise the opposite can be said, you be better off spending the money if you are not at all comfortable with the XOOPS environment.

Happy Xoopsing!

have you approached the programmers of these modules, to see if they'd be willing to customise them for your needs?

They may charge for this, but it may be easier than trying alternative work-arounds?

Amember is great and it is $140.00 for the license and then another $40.00 for the plug in.

I believe at one time I posted how to make a plug in for it. Not that hard if those directions are still on this website. If you are looking for a more hands off when it comes to registeration at your site this is the way to go. It will add and expire the members depending on what they purchase. if you have the cash this is the best way to go. I will look for the XOOPS plug in if you go this route. Just PM me

xDonations is also a great way to go if you only want to take payments through paypal. Like it was stated, if they sign up at the site it will assign them to a group, you edit the group permissions so that only this group we will call them members for now and webmasters have access to them. Everyone else that signs up only gets access to the xdonations module. Edit the templates and you are golden. The down side to this is no user manager so you have to remember to manually delete them from that user group when there time is up.

Best of Luck

How about setting up the site so that users have to activate their account via e-mail.

Change the template of the activation e-mail so that it contains your verbiage and a link to your paypal subscription checkout.

Once their payment goes through, you can activate them manually.

Unfortunately, I am unaware of any free or gpl modules/hacks that will auto-manage your membership database as well as your paypal payment history at the same time.

Anyway I noodle it out in my head, it requires work by the site admin.

Were you able to get the donations module to accept a donation, list the donation in the block and assign the user to a new group?

If you were able to get that far...your more than halfway there.

One idea would be to redirect people registering to a payment page(paypal subscription/submission form), and use a redirect from paypal that sends them to the actual registration page.
Have admins activate the accounts...that way, whenever you get an email from paypal alerting you of a payment or a cancelation, you can activate and deactivate the user.

This will also give you a minute to enter the user id and billed customer info into your own DB for tracking etc.

fun problem