Hello! I just set up this WordPress plugin on my website last night and I have patrons trying out some locked content on my website this morning and I have had feedback from a couple of them that I wanted to pass along because this seems like a bug to me.
When they clicked the “Unlock with Patreon” button on my site, it prompted them to login as they hadn’t logged into Patreon yet this morning. That part makes sense to me. But when they finished logging in, the pledge page appeared. This confused them, as they’ve been pledged to me for months at the correct tiers and were expecting to get the Permissions screen. They closed my site page and re-opened it (without logging out of Patreon in the browser) and only then did it work properly (Unlock > Allow > Post Content Unlocked).
Seeing this process cause confusion for them both, I’m worried that I’m going to have more patrons confused when they see a pledge screen when they shouldn’t be. Do I need to tell my Patrons that they need to be logged into Patreon before accessing my site?
Any insight on this is appreciated!
EDIT: I’ve just realized there is another issue, and it actually ties in to the first issue. My tiers are set up in CAD currency as that is where I live, but most of my patrons are outside of Canada and pay in a variety of currencies. Many are trying to access my locked posts on Patreon, but this plugin doesn’t recognize that they’re paying at the right tier and it’s forcing them to update their pledge to be charged in CAD instead of their currency. Why is it set up this way instead of recognizing they’re pledged at the right tier?
Hi, I have yet another thing to add to my list of problems with this plugin in addition to the two things above, which I believe at this point is simply just a currency issue.
I have many annual pledgers on my Patreon and most of them process a cancellation of the auto-renewal. Even though he is still active and has months left on his Membership, he is unable to access my locked posts on WordPress. It just shoots him to the payment screen and he can’t get around it.
This is a really big problem and I can’t see clearly in the settings for this plugin how to fix either of these issues. Thanks in advance for your help!
Do the affected patrons see a different tier/$ amount than what the post is locked for, when they go to Patreon when they try to unlock?
The annual patron is likely affected by the same issue.
Hi codebard! I’ve had some Patrons test this out for me and send me screenshots.
My first Patron has been pledged at my $4 CAD tier (my lowest tier) for a few months now and has not cancelled. He is in the US so pays $3.50 USD. This is the payment screen he gets when he tries to access my post and he’s not able to get around this payment screen. If I amend my post settings to $3.50 instead of just selecting the tier, then he’s able to see the post.
My second patron is pledged at my $10 CAD tier and paying $8 USD. Also hasn’t cancelled. Same thing, if I change my post settings to $8 instead of selecting the tier, then he’s able to see the content. But when he’s on my website trying to access a $10 post, this is the payment screen he gets that he can’t get around.
I don’t have screenshots yet from one of my annual patrons, but I’ll explain that. He is pledged at $10 CAD, paying $91.80 USD per year. He pledged on April 14, 2022 and requested a cancellation on Feb 13, 2023 with membership expiring on May 1, 2023. He gets a payment screen that he can’t get around no matter which post he is trying to access, the $10 tier post or the $4 tier post. I will reply with screenshots as soon as I have them.
I am hoping there is a solution to both of these issues. I have patrons from all over the world paying in all kinds of currencies and I have around 40 annual pledgers. Thank you for looking into this for me and please let me know if there is anything else that I can provide to you.
Hello again codebard! I got your email indicating that there was a new version of this plugin, so I got it all updated. Confirmation:
WP 6.1.1 with PHP 7.4.33
Patreon WordPress 1.8.6 with API v2
Patron Plugin Pro 1.5.4
Patreon Button, Widgets and Plugin 2.1.7
I was hoping that this update would solve my issues, but unfortunately not. I had these same patrons try my locked posts again. I made sure that they cleared cookies/cache and one of them also tried Incognito mode on their browser. Despite logging into Patreon and then trying to access my posts, they are still experiencing the exact same issues as I’ve described above.
Out of curiosity, I had some more of my patrons test and I specifically picked folks in countries outside of Canada and the US who are paying in their currencies. I’ve confirmed that the only patrons having issues are those paying in a currency that works out to be lower than the Canadian dollar. So my post locked at $4 Canadian… if they are in Australia paying $4.50 AUD they can access it. But if it’s a person in the UK paying £3, they are locked out and keep getting hit with an Update Pledge payment screen that ironically tries to get them to sign up to the tier they’re already paying for paying in the currency they’re already paying in (as you can see from the screenshots in my previous reply).
I noticed when scrolling back through your Plugin Updates that you provide here: https://codebard.com/patron-pro-feature-highlights-from-updates that in version 1.5.1 you had stated there was support for handling all currencies and that we can set a currency in the post interface on WordPress. But I am not able to see this anywhere. I can only see selecting my tier and putting in an optional dollar amount, but it doesn’t indicate the currency, nor can I select one.
I really want to use this plugin as I’ve paid for Pro. Please let me know if there is anything else you need from me, like information on the other plugins that I have or the Theme I’m using or if you require any other information about my Patreon page settings. I appreciate you looking into this for me.
This is likely a potential issue with the Patreon API and they cannot be handled through the plugins alone. So updating the plugins cannot address this. It must be looked at Patreon side.
I’ll investigate this, but I cannot say when it could be fixed. For the time being, you could get around this by giving a custom $ level to these patrons with Patron Pro by going to user’s profile in WP admin, then adding an amount in your own currency.
Thanks for your response. Unfortunately I have over 200 patrons and I do not have the capacity to go into each of their profiles individually (nor keep checking to see if new patrons to my page have logged in with Patreon through my website). Not to mention, nowhere does it indicate what the currency is in any of these Patreon settings. At this point, I am confident that my WordPress has defaulted to USD currency, but because you still haven’t confirmed exactly what the issue is, I have no idea what dollar amount to put in these fields. Is it my CAD tier price exchanged to USD? Is it my CAD tier price exchanged to the currency of whatever they’re paying in?
If it’s an issue with the Patreon API then I will reach out to Patreon Support and reference this forum. If they aren’t able to resolve anything on their end, then I will be submitting a refund request on this plugin as I did pay for Pro, but I am completely unable to use it right now.
My site is set in AUD, and I have a variety of patrons paying in different currencies. I do not have this issue, customers paying in USD, Euro, and GBP all are able to access the site.
I did testing to output the value the patrons had attached to their account and it would output the tier amount in AUD, not the currency they paid in.
I ended up writing custom unlocking modules instead of relying on Patreon plugin logic (the logic seemed to be broken at the time - supposedly fixed now).
Hi Katie, I’m not a developer and my knowledge with coding is limited, but if I could get assistance on where to plug in code to make this work for everyone without having to go into their individual profiles to set amounts, I’d be willing to do that. I also still can’t seem to find any currency settings with this plugin.
The plugin uses your campaign currency. So whichever currency that you are using, you should enter that amount.
This may be something at Patreon API side and it will be investigated in near future. I cant give an exact eta.
If you need to refund Patron Pro, you can put a request refund at Codebard.com
So, when you use getUserPatronage function, are you getting the pledge in the patron’s currency?
getUserPatronage returns the pledge in the site currency, in my case in AUD.
Scenario
Site is in AUD, pledge tier is AUD5.
Patron is in USA, and is paying in USD. I can view in Patreon dash that their payment amount is USD4.00 which equals AUD5.85 (or two arbitrary numbers - please don’t fixate on the exact values)
When I query getUserPatronage to output is the pledge tier amount in AUD. In this case AU5
Can you DM me your Patreon page link and the patron’s email?
