Dmitry,

+1 for this problem.

we manage a club that has several husband and wife members that in the past have shared a common email address in our offline db. When we imported it into WA, we lost a significant portion of our member records due to doubled up email addresses. The hack you suggested does not seem certain enough for us to depend on, without an awkward membership email test to those members in this situation.

If usernames can be split from email addresses in the db, then we would have 95% of our problems solved. We can handle the invoicing through a bit of extra paperwork, so no big deal on that end.

Matt Beck,

Futuriva, Inc.

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for posting these details. Unfortunately we have not been able to look into this area - so we are still collecting feedback to figure out the key issues and design changes/enhancements.

I have a very similar problem to that explained by Ian MacDonald. In fact, it is, for all intents and purposes identical.

I am setting up a database for club membershup for an Ice Skating club in the UK. We have several levels of membership "Skating", "Non Skating" and "Family". The Family membership fits the group (bundle) membership type exactly.

We have, however, the difficulty that many parents set themselves up as a "Non Skating" member and also their child as a "Skating" member (Family membership is only really meant for those with two or more children). In the case of our club, many of the children simply do not have their own email address - several are under the age of 6 for example - and it is not possible for a parent to register their child with the same email address as they have.

Neither, as far as I can tell, is it possible for a Family bundle membership to use the same email address for all members as it appears that it is necessary for each member to register individually.

We have experimented with the "a+b@example.com" email address format (which should arrive at "a@example.com"), however there are too many email providers that do not support this format to make it a viable option.

This is extremely unfortunate, as we now find ourselves paying for something (WA) that does not fit our needs.

Is there any progress with regards to any potential fixes for this problem? I have searched the forums and it has come up as an issue many times since at least 2008.

My own suggestion would be:

(1) During registration, permit the user to enter a "username" field which defaults to the users email address if not specified and is to be used for login, or

(2) Allow the user to use anything in the e-Mail field (so that it does not have to be an email address) and modify the WA system so that a site administrator can specify the field in the DB that is used to send emails to (which would default to the e-Mail field). This would mean no change to the backend logon system (which would still have to validate the entered login name against the e-Mail field), and permit individual members to select whatever email address they require for emails to be sent to - these, can therefore be the same for different members. The only downside I can think of to this is that the name of the "e-Mail" field is not strictly an e-Mail address any more.

Gordon Read

Isle of Wight Ice Dance And Figure Skating Club

UK

Comment form another user:

" ...The system is a poor match for our Family Memberships. The database lists the family members separately and does not connect them for mailings and e-mails. Many of our Family Members use shared e-mail addresses. Have to set up 1 member with a false e-mail. I would list them both in the same entry except some want each to get an e-mail. I would prefer a username that did not require an e-mail, with a space in the database for at least 2 e-mail addresses so I could enter the family membership as one entry...."

We are also trying to work out how to best handle families in our new WA site, since nearly all of our members are families. We certainly need each account to have more than one email address for mailings so that we don't have to manage multiple accounts per membership just in order to send notices.

[quote user="MikeF"]

I am also the administrator of a family oriented swim club. For the most part we can all we want by creating an account for each family. It would be nice to break down the family account by spouse and children as each family member can be involved in many individual events.

My main wishlist at the moment is a Secondary Email for each account. As with most families each spouse has an email address they would like to recieve notices on. We are currently at 200 families and adding additional accounts for spouses would require us to move to the next level of membership which, unfortunately is not possible for us at this time. Email management is the primary reason we moved to this service recently so that we can communicate with our membership more effectively.

My request is for a Secondary Email address for each account which is used for email blasts. The primary email would continue to be used for billing and primary singular contact as it is currently. [/quote]

I am also the administrator of a family oriented swim club. For the most part we can all we want by creating an account for each family. It would be nice to break down the family account by spouse and children as each family member can be involved in many individual events.

My main wishlist at the moment is a Secondary Email for each account. As with most families each spouse has an email address they would like to recieve notices on. We are currently at 200 families and adding additional accounts for spouses would require us to move to the next level of membership which, unfortunately is not possible for us at this time. Email management is the primary reason we moved to this service recently so that we can communicate with our membership more effectively.

My request is for a Secondary Email address for each account which is used for email blasts. The primary email would continue to be used for billing and primary singular contact as it is currently.

We have more requests for family memberships. I am posting another use case from a client for discussion.

I have just launched your nice tool but have run into a problem:

We are a club with junior members were the parents do the membership registration and register juniors for events. Now, parents that have more than one child in our club, will of course register more memberships which is fine except for that they will need to use additional email addresses to create additional memberships and login names. That's not very nice.

Is there a way that the login does not also have to be the email address that info ets is send to. Or do you have other ways that get me around this problem.

Kind regards,
Karsten

Ian,

I appreciate your detailed comment.

First, there is a workaround (more like a hack) that might work (works with most email providers). use idmcdonald+connor@xtra.co.nz for Connor etc. Our system will consider this to be a unique email but your email provider will ignore stuff after plus sign and deliver to your mailbox.

Now, we definitely still need to address the situation you have described - in a proper way. Simply removing the requirement for email will not cut it since there would be no way to send invoices etc. I will split your post to a separate thread so that we can get more feedback, thoroughly analyze and properly address the key issue - handling family memberships.

Hi there Dmitri and other users

The issue that you have with email address beng the primary key in your databases is probably costing you a lot of sales.

Example:
I am trying to work out how to do what I believed would be a "given" for a membership system

Our swimming club has single members as well as members and their families (you know, mum, dad, two kids)

We want to record all members in WA (we have purchased Community level), however I now have an unexpected problem that we can't lodge members using a common email address.

Each family has one or two email addresses i.e. in my family we have one, I have mine and my two sons (aged 11 and 12) do not have any.

IAN MCDONALD idmcdonald@xtra.co.nz Level = Master $100 Qtr
CONNOR MCDONALD idmcdonald@xtra.co.nz Level = Junior $200 Qtr
LOUIS MCDONALD idmcdonald@xtra.co.nz Level = Junior $200 Qtr

I am in at the Masters swim Level, and my sons are in a Juniors swim level.

We pay separate amounts and so we will be set up under different levels (Masters $100 per quarter, Juniors $200 per quarter). All good so far.

Now as administrator I want to enter / import all our club members into WA. Many (30%) like me are families with a single email address.

I also want to have WA send us an invoice either for the whole family, or failing that for each individual (which would actually be fine)

The irony is that I can't do either.

(a) I can't enter myself and the boys in using my email address

(b) if I enter fake email addresses (which aren't real), then WA can't email me an invoice or renewal notice as they don't actually go anywhere

(c) There appears to be no way to invoice or receipt transactions tied to one email address

I would like to know how we can do this one simple thing !

If you have any ideas please advise.

Otherwise how will I use WA as our membersip system ?

Ian McDonald
Membership Manager
The Devonport Swimming Club

Our club is an alpine ski racing club.

We have families who signup thier children for the program. Currently using Wild Appricot we cannot have a family signup and then register thier children in the program.

It would be great to be able to allow a familiy to register for the program and then add thier children to the membership.

EG - Hensien Family
Katie Hensien Membership Level(Sunday Mighty Mite - $900)
John Hensien - memberhsip Level(Junior Racer - $2150)
Andy Hensien - memberhsip Level (J4FT racer - $1250)

Hensien family can then pay and manage all kids from one account.

Right now we have families creating accounts for each racer - and remembering all those logins and passwords is a pain.

Kari
Site Admin http://www.cmacskiracing.com