DolphinAdminMembershipLevels...

Everything I know about Membership levels I learned at DolphinAdminMembershipLevels.  The rest has been my discovery process, and I'm wondering if there's either more information out there or if there's anything unusual in my experience:

First, I noticed that when a user Joins, the *only* membership level they can join as is Standard, unless anyone knows anything more about this (and already I have bought "ProfileSplitter", which I'm told by Expertzzz will have to be installed for me by the developer himself, eventually).

But in the meantime, I also see that from the Admin panel, the user that joins is considered 'inactive', until the admin or moderator goes to edit their profile and approves them (I've adjusted the Moderation settings so that users are not automatically 'active'), and then can switch them to be Promotional and so forth.  There is even an option to have the promotion 'start immediately', I see, although when else it would start is unclear and there doesn't seem to be too much out there about that particular feature.  And of course the promotional membership is set to the default of '7 days'. All this seems swell, a little odd that it can't just be set to automatically approve registrants with a 7 day promotional, but whatevs...

OK, so, as it is now, the user goes through join, and then gets to the response page telling them their profile has been submitted for approval and sit tight for 12 hours.  But at the top of that page is the Membership Login panel that is persistent in every page that isn't the home page, for presumably approved and active users. Yet even this non-activated user, apparently, can log in anyway- despite the fact that they're inactive, having not been approved, and since the 7 day expiration only applies to the Promotional Membership, they have full run of whatever Standard can do.  The Membership page suggests that this Standard status will "expire never" which will certainly suck for them when the admin logs in the next day, sees them as 'inactive', makes them active and sets the user to be a 7 day Promotional, presumably changing this expiration.

Except it doesn't matter to the user one way or another.  Because If I *do* set the user to a Promotional Membership, having- apparently redundantly- "activated" them whatever that does, they then have a Promotional membership which expires... never!  I haven't given it 7 days to see whether that's actually true, but even if I set the promotional membership to 2 days nothing changes, sooo I guess what I'm wondering is this:

1. Does this experience sound atypical of what the Membership functionalities are supposed to be on Dolphin, and/or are my assumptions that user access be more geared towards restriction by the admin at the outset not the philosophy of how Dolphin Memberships work?

2. Is there anyway way other than Profile Splitter to have a user join at a user level other than "Standard"

3. What is the purpose of approval, if the user who submits a profile -despite having the moderation setting set to not automatically approve them- is still able to access the site indefinitely as a  'Standard'

4. What does the 'start immediately' button do?  What happens if it is not clicked?  Can it be removed?  Can a time limit be set for Standard?

5. Is it usual for the Promotional Membership to list itself as expiring "never" even when the Admin Panel promotional setting is set to 7 days?

6.  Is there some repository of knowledge about Membership levels kept somewhere other than at DolphinAdminMembershipLevels?

Thanks, other than these issues, Dolphin seems great so far- but the Membership levels aspect does not immediately seem that intuitive to me.

A profile Splittler will NOT do what your looking to do.  It creates different types of profiles, an example of this would be a Hospital who wants to create an SNS that enable nurses, doctors, patients and families to all communicate.  In this instance, you could have it set up for Hospital Administrators Profile Types, Patient Profile types & Family Profile types.  Then you would take the Hospital Administrators and break them up between Doctors, Nurses, Techs, Pharmacists and so on via a predefined dependent value. 

Now, if you work for the hospital you see one thing (type of questions asked, color scheme, information available for viewing and so on) if your a patient you get a different template, different questions and obviously family members could end up with something totally different.  Notice, this has nothing to do with membership types. 

As far as installation of the Profile Splitter goes, I've utilized the mod creator (AntonLV) for many items and he will get it installed for you quickly and efficiently.  However, you should inquire with him more to make sure this mod does what you want it to do before it's installed.  I've used the PS many times on many projects and while I find it to be a great tool, it's not what your asking about in your post here.

Hmm k...  maybe I don't need PS.  Now I'm not sure.  Thank you very much for your reply.

All I need is for the user to be able to decide what membership level they're joining with at the point that they join, which I'm somewhat amazed is an issue for Dolphin unless there's something completely obvious that I'm missing.  My impression was that the profile splitter would be able to have a dropdown box at the top of the join page that says I am joining as *this* type of member versus *that* type of member, but what I'm really asking for is if there is any way that membership level is something the user chooses *when they join* , not something granted by the admin or something decided later from the membership page?

The Profile Splitter assigns types of profiles, your looking for a membership type.  That is different than profile types.

Anton, the person you purchased the Profile Splitter from, will be able ot help you out with what your trying to do here.  He has a huge experience level with Dolphin (one of the best literally) and will get you straightened out.

awesome- thanks so much, I appreciate it

Would be great to know if you got this resolved and what was needed to resolve the issue.

I have to agree that the membership system is not intuitive - it's down right archaic and makes no sense what's over in an environment like Dolphin.

The fact that you can not control the default memberships drives me nuts.  I don't want promotional, standard, or non-member in my system nor do I want it "auto-assigned" to new registrants.  I want my membership level to be based on the membership price at time of join.

I certainly don't feel these requests are outside of the "norm" for platforms of this caliber.

I have also spent considerable time trying to determine how to implement a specific "joinup path" for users.

Ideally they can select one of four profile types, and then be asked to enter profile appropriate information. It appears that MEMBERSHIP types in essence are paid or free. Problems with understanding the correct terminology can make this harder to resolve.

On top of this is the also user's STATUS: pending, approved, banned, active, unconfirmed AND the account expiry date

It seems that an unconfirmed member can login and prepare a profile but it only becomes visible to others after email link verification and (manual or automatic) approval.

Not only is it hard to figure all this out as admin, but users are also confused by what happens next, what can I do now, why aren't others seeing me, etc.

If there is a clear explanation of all this anywhere I would appreciate the link

I noticed how confusing this can be for users while testing.  I have some items I'm hoping to have answered:

1)  I enabled email verification, but as stated a user can feel as if they're active when they're not.  After they join, but have not confirmed their email, they should not be logged in as it is now.  What's worse, if they click to view anything - even something like a public video - they get 'access denied' while pending verification.  Is there a way to prevent this?  Can they be forced out of the site once they've signed up but have not verified their email?

2)  The users get an email stating their profile has been approved right before or after the email for verification.  This is also confusing because they can think they're approved and don't need to click the link in the verification email.  Can the 'approval' email be blocked if email verification is being used?