Registering New Members Without Email Addresses

We have been using Membership Pro for our museum. Because of this, we have members that come to our building, and some that access our website. Up until now, we have been using Membership Pro just to keep track of everyone, and adding email addresses as we get them. With most of members being seniors, not all of them have email addresses.

Up until the update, I could create a new member and edit them, it would just give me an error message before saving - however, it would still save my other changes.

Since the update - the system refuses to allow me to track members that do not have an email address.

Since I use membership pro to export to word to create mail merges and do other such functions, this is a problem.

How can I add members that do not have email addresses?

Thank you!

Shellie

Hi Shellie

As Joomla requires an email to create an account for one user, if you don't enter email, Membership Pro could not create a Joomla account for that subscriber .

Maybe you don't need to create account for your subscribers ? If so, you can submit a support ticket, we will edit the code to make email become optional for you

Tuan

Tuan

I would be interested in that feature as well.

I am having to make up dummy email addresses at present to cater for members of our society who havent got/provided them. A good third of my datbase has dummy email addresses.

Regards
Alan

We aren't yet using MembPro but when we do we will have some who don't have email addresses. I realise joomla wants an email but for those who use it for part website, part other uses it would be very useful.

Just needs a toggle in the backend? Any issues for password reset function etc? Thats why joomla now insists on unique email I gather (way back in J!1.0 that was optional).

One method I have used - I have a catch-all email address that I use for any member who does not have an email address. You just need to use the following format - 'test+1@gmail.com', 'test+2@gmail.com'.... as long you do not duplicate the number after the '+', these are valid email addresses and all emails will be sent to test@gmail.com


Hope that helps!

Cool. Works a treat.

I had the same problem and have a very slightly different solution. Although we're not live yet, the csv file will have a 'dummy' email address for those who are 'ofline' members (ie who we don't have an email address for). This dummy email address is in the format: member-ID<Membership Pro ID number>@domain.com (eg member-ID1234@domain.com). The csv import will be a one-off, so I can make sure the ID number used in the csv file will match the membership ID number Membership Pro will give them on import.

Now, because these emails are all on our domain.com, I can set up a way of redirecting them to our membership secretary so he receives the reminder emails, etc - he then will send our paper renewal notices. The advantage of using the Membership Pro ID number means it's easy for the membership secretary to find the subscriber who needs to renew - although you could do much the same with test+1@gmail.com.

I'm using cPanel so don't know if this will work elsewhere but I created a email accounts default@domain.com and member@domain.com. I set the catchall address as default@domain.com. That means that ALL emails (that aren't to another email account or don't have a forwarder) will be sent to the default@domain.com email address.

Now, to select and redirect the member-ID<Membership Pro ID number>@domain.com emails, I set up an email filter (which I named 'Member redirect') for default@domain.com:

To: contains member-ID Redirect to <the membership secretary's personal email account>

AND

a second redirect on the same filter to the member@domain.com account. This ensures a copy of the email is kept and would allow the membership secretary to retrieve emails from member@domain.com.

A second email filter for default@domain.com, which I named 'Junk':

To: contains @domain.com Discard Message

This last one makes sure default@domain.com doesn't just fill up with all the spam emails - since the first filter will have already done the redirects, everything else is junk.

This may sound complicated, but it's fairly easy to set up and works. The way the first filter works, you have the choice of forwarding to the membership secretary or him/her simply accessing the member@domain.com email account over POP, IMAP or webmail. We've not decided which to do, but there's no harm in setting it up to do both. It also means that if the membership secretary is ill or his PC blows up, someone else can access the member@domain.com account and take over.

I have decided that I will make email optional when adding new subscription record from backend. In case email is not entered, I will make it so that Membership Pro won't create a Joomla account for the subscription record. It should solve the problem some customers are having here now

If you still want to create Joomla account, then you will have to enter a fake email for that subscription record

Tuan

That sounds like a very good idea, Tuan and gives the users a choice.

We don't have that many 'offline' members and the reminder emails will be very useful to the membership secretary as a prompt to send out paper renewal notices. However, with a larger number, that might overload his Inbox! Of course, he can always log in to the back end and see what offline members are due for renewal, but is there a way of notifying him that there are offline renewals due to prompt him to go and look?

Having said that, I don't think there's an easy way of seeing those subscriptions that have been entered via the backend - perhaps looking at the joomla account email address (if I use the format I described above) is the only way (but see below). Membership Pro doesn't give an easy way of checking these to see which have expired, but this could be done by exporting the csv file and filtering in Excel. This might be OK as our membership secretary would then use the filtered Excel file as the source of a mailmerge to print the renewal notices, but these are manual steps it would be good to have done by Membership Pro.

Anyone any thoughts on whether there us a better way?

Perhaps there is a way: I have assumed that a backend user would subscribe someone to one of the plans available to the front end user, but that doesn't have to be the case. If I set up a plan that is only available to the backend user, these will identify those that need paper reminder notices. I think that solves many of the problems. The membership secretary still has to filter them but that's easier because it's a different plan.

Tuan Pham Ngoc wrote: I have decided that I will make email optional when adding new subscription record from backend. In case email is not entered, I will make it so that Membership Pro won't create a Joomla account for the subscription record. It should solve the problem some customers are having here now

If you still want to create Joomla account, then you will have to enter a fake email for that subscription record

Tuan

Did this get added somewhere in MembPro 2.3?

I have MembPro integrated into Joomla Users - is that my problem? I was hoping if they didn't add the username/password/email it would just not create a separate account for group members. I'm going to have family members signing up for group membership and adding mum, dad and 2 kids as group members so that we have all their info. But they may well have the same email address. Ideally they'd have a separate website login but I can cope with not if need be. I'm not sure they will understand the somethingunique+nomalemail@address.com approach.