How payments work in XenForo
Paid access in XenForo is built on user upgrades: you set the price and the term, and once paid the forum moves the member into the right group by itself and removes them when the term ends. The money is taken by a payment profile, a link to a specific payment service.
The built-in profiles are made for international services, so a Russian-speaking forum almost always adds payments with an add-on. We cover the options in detail in our article on taking payments on XenForo (in Russian).
The Platega gateway for paid user groups
The gateway adds Platega as a XenForo payment profile. The member picks an upgrade, pays on the Platega page, and the add-on receives the payment notification, verifies it and grants the group. If the notification is late, the add-on re-checks the payment by itself.
Once the gateway is out, its catalog page will list the price, the supported XenForo versions and an installation guide, and your key and files will appear in your account right after payment.
If you need payments on your forum sooner, or through another payment service, we will write a payment profile for it to order. The estimate depends on how the chosen service's API works and how it reports a payment.
Custom XenForo add-ons
A forum often needs what ready-made add-ons do not have: a section of its own with special permissions, a profile field that affects access, member export to a CRM, Telegram alerts for moderators. We write such add-ons the XenForo way, through events and class extensions, without editing core files.
- Your own pages and sections with separate group permissions
- Extra profile fields and checks at sign-up
- Data exchange with your CRM, spreadsheets and website
- Telegram alerts for moderators and administrators
Forum, website and Telegram in one link
A forum rarely lives on its own. A community may have a website, a Telegram channel, a spreadsheet of paying members. We link them: a member who bought access on the site gets the group on the forum, new threads from an important section go to the channel, and the list of paying members always matches what your bookkeeper sees.
Keeping the forum and members' data secure
An add-on runs with the forum's privileges and sees members' data. We check permissions and tokens on every action, never store payment service keys in plain text and send members' data nowhere except the services named in the task.
The code has no hidden links or “phone home” calls. The code of a custom add-on is entirely open to you; you can show it to another developer.
XenForo updates and compatibility
An add-on written with XenForo's own mechanisms survives regular forum updates. Before handover we test it on a copy of your forum, with your XenForo version and your add-ons, so conflicts turn up before your members see them.
If a major XenForo update changes something, we adapt the add-on under a new estimate.
How work on an add-on goes
You describe the task in a request, we ask follow-up questions and send an estimate: the stages and the price and timeline of each. A stage is paid before work starts; you check the result on a copy of the forum and accept it with one click in your account. The rights to the code written for you pass to you once the stage is accepted.
The work needs a copy of the forum or access to a test install. Access to the live forum is needed only for installation, and for it please give us a separate administrator account with limited rights.
For an estimate, describe what should happen on the forum and name your XenForo version and the add-ons already installed. If there is a similar add-on that almost fits, add a link: it makes it easier to explain what is missing.