OD Plus Subscription Expiration and Reminders

Hello everybody,

I’ve got a few things to relate concerning OD Plus subscriptions today.

First, I’ve added a new expiration reminder to the system, to let you know if your subscription is about to run out. Unlike the old system (where the yellow reminder box showed up on your diary page, and stayed around like an unwelcome houseguest), this warning will appear as a message when you unlock your diary, when you have less than fourteen days of your subscription left. The message tells you there are less than two weeks left on your subscription, and lets you proceed. The message will continue to appear until you renew your subscription, or your subscription runs out, unless you check the “Don’t notify me again” box on the message screen. If you do that, the reminder message will stop appearing.

This gives us the best of both worlds. If you are (like me) a person with a mind like a sieve for these sorts of things, the message will show up every time you unlock your diary – cheerfully reminding you of your pending expiration (no, not that expiration). If, on the other hand (due to youth or other mitigating factors), you have a mind that retains these sort of facts, you can send the reminder message on its merry way, never to bother you again.

If you don’t know where your subscription stands, please remember that you can always check the Subscription Info screen – the link is at the bottom right of your Diary Maintenance menu (if you are an OD Plus member). This screen tells you when your subscription was last renewed, and when it will expire.

There also seems to be some confusion on the site about what happens if you have a Plus subscription that expires. On the old site, you were granted a 30-day grace period to renew, and then your access to your diary was blocked.

In the new OD, we don’t have to be so hardheaded about it – since the free diaries and Plus diaries now all live together in one space. Today, if you have a Plus subscription that expires, your access is not removed – your diary just reverts to basic OD status, and you lose the Plus benefits that you have been enjoying. Therefore, you will still be able to write in your diary and use it, but you will not be able to:

• block other users from your diary
• keep a note history
• perform keyword searches in diaries
• use reader passwords
• avoid banner ads and popups (yikes!)
• avoid removal for inactivity (if your diary is inactive)

The benefits above are what current OD Plus subscribers enjoy, and if your subscription expires you will not have access to them. However, your diary will not be removed or deactivated.

One other word about the above – regarding inactivity. My current policy is that diaries which are inactive (meaning they have had no entries posted to them) for more than ninety (90) days, are subject to removal from the site. While I haven’t done this in awhile (I wanted to make sure we were all settled into our new homes), I will be reactivating this rule soon. An OD Plus diary is not subject to removal, no matter how long it has been inactive – as long as the subscription is kept current. Once a subscription expires, a formerly Plus diary will be subject to removal for inactivity, just like any other diary.

Remember, you can start or stop an OD Plus subscription at any time – without needing to move your diary somewhere else or lose access to it. If you currently have a free diary, and you want to try OD Plus for six months, you can subscribe and then choose not to renew – and still keep your diary just as it is. The free-or-subscription choice is a two-way road now – you can go back and forth between basic and Plus status without losing any of the contents or basic functionality of your diary.

(EDIT – should have covered this but didn’t)

Somebody asked if they had a subscription, it expired, and then they renewed – would their note history be gone? No – your note history would still be there, if you came back to Plus status. However, it would be missing any notes that you left while a basic member – it only tracks notes that are left by Plus members.

The DiaryMaster

 I think this may have broken my record for the gratuitous use of parentheses and hyphens in a diary entry.