Micro-manage Membership Levels as Admin

Hello,

I’ve been considering buying s2pro, and I have a unique needs for a membership site where I need an administrator to personally control membership levels.

There will be:
— 3 different levels of content access as well
— 2 different membership prices (student or professional) as well as
— another distinction of affiliate vs non-affiliate.

The trick is this, we don’t want users to be able to change these.

Users would need to be able to register or “apply” for a free account with virtually no privileges. A membership committee would review the application before making a recommendation. Then the member would be assigned the one each of the three variables mentioned above. They should not be allowed to change any of those variables themselves.

Lastly, we would want members to have the option to extend their accounts either automatically or cancel them through the system altogether.

I know this is terribly complex, but we need a system to conform to some organizational challenges we have.

Thanks so much,

Erich

Hi Eric,

All of what you described is possible using s2Member Pro.

The various content access levels are already built into s2Member and the various distinctions could be done using Custom Capabilities (see Video » s2Member (Custom Capabilities)).

Users can upgrade/renew/cancel their accounts using the s2Member Pro Billing Upgrade, Billing Modification, and Billing Cancelation forms.

While there are no built-in features for managing the review of accounts, many other site owners who have required a similar step simply allowed free registration that provided virtually no new access. Then an Administrator would manually review the free accounts and “upgrade” them as they see fit (upgrading the account would simply involve editing the user and changing their role to one with higher access).

Please see Pre Sale FAQs for a complete list of FAQs and PayPal® Pro Form Integration for a list of Pro Form features. You may also want to watch a few of the s2Member Videos to familiarize yourself with the plugin.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by  Raam Dev.

Great! Watched those videos — very informative.

Last couple of questions, just to reiterate. It’s possible these are silly questions because I just haven’t used s2 before, but I want to be clear.

1. I could theoretically create a registration system where users would ONLY be able to register for the free account. Once registered, I would be able to change their account types via the admin panel, but they would NOT be able to change their account types or try to buy a different account type themselves. Correct?

2. Can s2 send out an automated email with all a user’s information upon registration? We have a membership committee, and it’s easier to forward an email than to copy-paste member information into an email before we send it out to the other committee members for review.

3. Can one create “hidden” user fields that to track specific member data without members being able to change it?

Thanks so much for your patience!

Erich

Hi there, thanks for your inquiry.

1. I could theoretically create a registration system where users would ONLY be able to register for the free account. Once registered, I would be able to change their account types via the admin panel, but they would NOT be able to change their account types or try to buy a different account type themselves. Correct?

Correct, if you don’t give them the PayPal buttons to upgrade, or you don’t give them the pro-forms to register for free (if you offer multiple free levels), it’s not possible for them to change their s2Member status in your website.

Does this answer your question?

In regard to the other 2 questions, I’ll wait for another Support Rep’s input, thank you for your patience. :)

1. I could theoretically create a registration system where users would ONLY be able to register for the free account. Once registered, I would be able to change their account types via the admin panel, but they would NOT be able to change their account types or try to buy a different account type themselves. Correct?

Yes, that’s certainly possible. You can always change their Role via the Dashboard, bumping them to a higher Membership Level. If you don’t want anything done automatically, just don’t make any Payment Buttons or Payment Forms available on the site. For instance, Payment Buttons and/or s2Member Pro Forms allow Customers to upgrade/downgrade by supplying billing details. If you want to avoid that, you can do everything manually through the Dashboard instead. You could still use a Pro Form for Free Registration though.

2. Can s2 send out an automated email with all a user’s information upon registration? We have a membership committee, and it’s easier to forward an email than to copy-paste member information into an email before we send it out to the other committee members for review.

Yes, this is already built into s2Member. These emails can be further customized in your Dashboard here: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Email Configuration

3. Can one create “hidden” user fields that to track specific member data without members being able to change it?

Yes, in WordPress, this is called a User Option, or a User Meta field. You can set values via PHP using the existing functionality provided by WordPress. Please see: update_user_meta().

Note. In your Dashboard, s2Member also has an Administrative Notes field, which allows administrators of the site to make notations about a User/Member, without that information being made public in any way. This might be an easier alternative for you, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish exactly.

Thanks! It’s refreshing to hear “yes we can” from developers every once and a while :)

You’re very welcome :-) Thanks for the follow-up.