Memberships

Memberships are organized into categories called membership types.

Membership status is equivalent to the profile content status:

• active/published (active membership)
• submitted (submitted for approval)
• applying/draft (application still being compiled)
• expired (expiry date has passed)
• lapsed/cancelled (membership was not renewed)

The term "archived" is no longer used, because it gets confused with other archived content (such as news articles).

Memberships, profiles, members, users, guests, and staff tended to get all jumbled up in V3, but V4 makes a much stronger distinction between them:

• a user is someone who can log in to your website
• a guest is a user with a lower level of access (level 1)
• a member is a user with a higher level of access (level 2)
• a membership is a special status a member has within the organization, which typically has a brief term and will expire if not renewed.
• staff are users who do not necessarily have memberships, but nevertheless may enjoy higher levels of access to the website
• a profile is a website page or destination that describes a member, and through which a user can maintain their membership

Because of this increased clarity, some new arrangements are possible:

• a user can maintain multiple memberships under a single login ID
• an admin can enter and track memberships without ever setting up a user for them, or entering dummy user info
• users do not necessarily need profiles, and profiles do not necessarily have to be associated with a user

Applications

The application process can be extended to multiple steps. For instance, the applicant can setup their profile, upload documents, and then submit their application.

Profiles that are still in this midst of this application process are shown in the Membership module in the "applying" state. These users still only have level 1 access to the system.

Application Forms

The application forms can be different for each membership type. The application form is just a form named "application_form" under the membership type.

You can put anything you like on the application form. Any fields with the following names will be automatically recognized and copied into the profile:

• first_name, last_name, name, title, label, language, privacy, visibility (will be used to setup the basic profile)
• address, city, provstate, country, email, phone, cell, fax, website, pcode, postal_code, zip_code, province, state, mobile (will be used to setup directory contact information for the profile)
• name, login, password, email (will be used to setup a user identity)
• any other fields matching profile metadata will be saved to the profile's metadata (eg. organization, birthdate, honorific, gender, etc.)

Any unrecognized fields on the application form will still be saved to the form response, but not copied into the profile.

If you track metadata named "application_data", the application form response will be stored there so that you can call up the original application at any time. So there is no need to copy all of the application info into the profile if you only need it to assess the merits of the application. Your application form and profile settings can track completely different data.

Membership Sub-types

V4 lets you have membership sub-categories, for example:

• Individual Members
• Professional
• Student
• Corporate Members
• For-profit
• Non-profit

This allows you to share settings, forms, and emails in each "group", which can simplify a lot of maintenance. Even having a single group allows you to put generic/shared settings, forms, and emails in that group rather than maintaining duplicates.

Membership Expiry

The expiry of a member is recorded as an "expiry" task. It runs at a particular date and time, and demotes the membership if it has not been renewed.

Life members do not need expiry dates that are set to decades in the future; simply remove all reference to their expiry date and they will not expire.

Notifications

Membership notifications are email content objects stored in the membership types. There are 4 that are automatically scheduled:

• new_profile - this is sent to the member when their profile is approved
• renewal_reminder - this is sent when expiry is pending
• expiry_notice - this is sent when the membership expires
• archival_notice - this is sent when the membership is terminated

Additionally, you can send

• new_user_notification - this is sent to any user user who signs up to the website, regardless of whether they are a member or not
• general membership blasts - these can be be set up and blasted to whole membership lists, or arbitrary reports of members

Membership Directories

Every membership type can automatically generate its own "index" or listing of members.

You can build any number of custom membership directories as follows:

• specify which membership types should be included in the directory
• specify some filters/conditions for which members should be included in the directory
• select a directory format, which determines how the directory is presented to to the viewing public. This can be listings, alphabetic menus, search tools, or maps.