Requirements for Free Member Registration

Memberships & subscriptions
1

I am trying to get the free tier membership capability setup for my theme and website. To test the setup I am running this on my local environment. I enabled the following:

  • Enabled Members
  • Allow free member signup
  • Email Settings (Enabled after receiving 500 Internal error and believing this was required)

Here is the form setup for my theme to collect their email.

<div class="flex items-center justify-center">
    <div class="container mx-24 bg-primary-800 rounded shadow-lg">
        <div class="text-center">
        <h3 class="font-normal text-white leading-loose my-3 w-full">Sign up for our newsletter and exclusive content!</h3>
        <div class="w-full text-center">
            <form data-members-form>
            <div class="max-w-xl mx-auto my-5 p-1 pr-0 flex items-center">
                <input data-members-email type="email" required="true" placeholder="jenny.doe@example.com" class="flex-1 appearance-none rounded border shadow p-3 text-grey-dark mr-2 focus:outline-none">
                <button type="submit" class="bg-secondary-500 text-white font-semibold tracking-wide uppercase p-3 rounded shadow hover:bg-secondary-600">Sign Up</button>
            </div>
            </form>
        </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

I notice that a request is made on submit http://localhost:2368/ghost/api/canary/members/send-magic-link/, with the value from the input in the email key within the payload, but receive a 500 internal error.

From Error log:

NAME: EmailError
MESSAGE: Failed to send email. Reason: connect ETIMEDOUT xxx.xxx.xx.xx:xx.

level: normal

    "Please see https://ghost.org/docs/concepts/config/#mail for instructions on configuring email."
    EmailError: Failed to send email. Reason: connect ETIMEDOUT xxx.xxx.xx.xx:xx.
        at EmailError.GhostError (/Users/user/dev/ghost-cms/versions/3.11.0/core/server/lib/common/errors.js:10:26)

I thought after my first attempt that this might be due to not configuring the email setting, but the same error appears after creating a mailgun account and passing in information.

What could be causing this issue?

Do I also need Stripe configured so that a free tier member can be add to their database?

In general are Stripe and Mailgun required to be able to register members? Can you use a different service than Mailgun (e.g. Mailchimp) or is this the only provider linked to the Membership during this beta? I also don’t have an email configured for the config file when I set up my Ghost instance. Is that at all related to my issues?

Any direction and help would be appreciated!

2

Have you tried the email testing tool in Labs > Testing tools > Test email configuration?

And no, you don’t need Stripe configured for free members.

3

I see the request for /test, but it isn’t going through. Just continuing to attempt.

4

It seems like your email settings for transactional emails aren’t configured properly. Have you entered your SMTP credentials in config.production.json like mentioned in this article?

2 Likes
5

Yes that resolved my question. In regard to the Stripe question. When that is configured are general (free tier) signups created as customers within Stripe? Is there a potential downside to not connecting to Stripe at the time of offering membership or is there a way to sync members prior to attaching Stripe to Stripes list of members?