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I'm helping build a WordPress site for a client, and they've let me know that they want to offer trial subscriptions for their site (they run on a subscription-based model - everything but the homepage is locked down until a subscriber logs in; this log-in system is managed by WordPress by default, along with a role-management plugin for barring users from seeing pages without having the right privileges). They need process a lot of trial orders every day (the ordering system is manual - they take orders from clients by phone), which means they'll need to invalidate or delete a lot of trial usernames and passwords every day.

I've been searching for a WordPress plugin that would allow them to automatically invalidate trial users (based on roles, perhaps) after, say, a week, but so far, nothing has come up. Is there any sort of functionality (either by default, or through a plugin or script) that would allow me to automate the process? The one helpful link I found is a question on StackOverflow (Auto Delete WordPress Users According to Time since Registering) that suggests a running a script that removes users from the database through cron; however, the site is running on a managed Windows server (IIS 6.0), so I don't have access to cron.

Is there anything I can do, short of recommending hiring a plugin developer to write something for them?

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Itai Ferber
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As you have access to the windows machine, refer to this question from Stack Overflow. You'll need to do a bit of research into crontab to understand how it works, but this is the basic premise the satisfy your need.

Alternatively, you could run a windows script and run it with the Windows Scheduler. This is probably the easier of the two options. I run a similar script that backs up our wordpress databases to our fileserver once a week and it works like a charm.

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DKNUCKLES
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  • I think I'll try the `crontab` first because I've already got an example of how to make it work; if not, I'll try the Windows Scheduler method. I've got Cygwin and `cron` installed already, so I'll try to adapt the script to get it to work on our setup. – Itai Ferber Mar 21 '12 at 16:23