Hi @Siyuan; as the website is now live, I have temporarily unpublished the ‘Membership’ page. As discussed at the last meeting, it might be sensible to combine both ‘membership’ and forum registration into the same process (to avoid the need to sign up twice). I’m not sure whether it’s possible to add/edit the data fields that are provided during the forum registration; if it is then that’s probably the time to gather any relevant information. However, we shouldn’t start a formal membership register until ISCET has decided which details to gather and we have someone responsible for maintaining the database (presumably a Membership Secretary which would need to be appointed). Thanks for putting this in place; hopefully after a bit of discussion we will be able to roll this out. I know that gathering membership data is something that @Rasha has been taking the lead on.
Nevertheless I’d suggest that we still allow anyone full access to the forum now (in its current form, i.e. without collecting ‘membership’ details) to allow free discussion; we can always follow-up with forum members to update their details as and when a proper membership process is in place.
Hi Matt, the plugin to allow adding a data field to the forum registration is not free. So currently, if we rely on forum registration, we can’t get the user information and control. My initial thought is to use membership form to manually add them so we have membership control. Members then login forum to communicate safely (we disable forum registration). These are two different ways.
Okay – just to clarify, are you suggesting that people would only sign up once, via the membership form and then a Members Secretary would create an account for them on the forum? Do you know whether this would still allow people to create a secure password to log into the forum (without exposing the password to the Members Secretary)?
If this is possible, then this seems a reasonable solution in the early years – at least until we perhaps migrate to something more substantive such as Wild Apricot (something we have discussed in the past and the system that ISCEV uses). We would also need to have clear signposting to where people can choose to end their membership.
Yes, the membership form can go to a Members Secretary (‘Feedback’ in the menu on the left) who then add a new user and tick ‘send user notification’ to send a login link to the user. Users can change password. Information about the user can be collected but there is a manual step.
If collecting member information is not urgent or undecided, and you think it is likely to migrate to Wild Apricot, we can leave it as is, where members register themselves. I think it is also a good timing to collect member information when we start using Wild Apricot.
Either way, it’s best that someone else can now register/sign in and we can check if there is any issue.