{"id":1228,"date":"2016-07-07T14:15:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T21:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/needweb.help\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2016-07-07T14:15:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T21:15:11","slug":"build-an-sms-subscription-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yourlocaltech.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/07\/build-an-sms-subscription-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Build an SMS Subscription Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you seen SendCatFacts.com<\/a><\/p>\n

I wanted to experiment with the plugin I wrote about in my last post and see if I could make something similar.<\/p>\n

What did I build:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A subscription based service to send daily motivational or de-motivational text messages to the number of your choosing.<\/p>\n

The steps below is a rough highlight of each piece needed to be done. I’ll assume you have a Stripe account or know how to setup one up and you own the Gravity Form developer license as it is needed for the add-ons. You will also need a paid Twilio account with an active phone number.<\/p>\n

Setup Site<\/strong><\/p>\n

Setup a simple WordPress site. Install a theme, I used Altitude Pro <\/a>from Genesis. Yes, I put it on WPEngine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Setup Gravity Forms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Install Gravity Forms<\/a> along with User Registration<\/a> and Stripe Payments<\/a>\u00a0add-ons.<\/p>\n

Create a form. I made a simple form that asks for the purchaser’s email address and then credit card info. The radio buttons decide use\u00a0conditional logic\u00a0to set the\u00a0product price. After you click a plan then the price is shown and you can enter credit card payment details<\/p>\n

Put form in widget area on home page.<\/p>\n

Setup Texting Plugin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Install and configuration Joy of Text Pro<\/a> plugin with Scheduling add-on. This step took an extended bit of time because I had to create 60 different text messages. 30 texts for 2 groups sent out daily.\u00a0I’m not going to go through the detailed process I used to setup the plugin. But it was pretty basic and the instructions provided by the plugin author were enough to make it work.<\/p>\n

Setup customization for Gravity Forms and Restricted Content<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keep the signup forms hidden from public for the Joy of Text plugin.<\/p>\n

What I wanted to happen is when somebody submitted payment\u00a0to send out the texts I needed them to go to a second form where they could enter the name and phone number. I didn’t want these pages to be public so I had to research some code to make gravity forms auto login a user upon payment of front page form.<\/p>\n

-Process flow:<\/strong>
\nCustomer fills in form on home page and submits payment then >
\nGravity forms custom function automatically creates user and auto logs in user and then forwards to correct customer page depending on option chosen.<\/p>\n

-What I needed for this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Restrict Content (free)<\/a> by Pippin Williamson and this bit of code added to functions.php<\/p>\n