In November 2021 I responded to an issue which I find particularly irksome. My complaint is that I run both a public area of the Euhonix Choir website (available to the general public) and a private area that is only available to registered members of the Choir.
The private/members area is needed as it contains files that we do not want released to the public (e.g. learning tracks, notes from the Musical Director, etc). Our only means of comms is the email notification that comes with publishing something on the Blog or Noticeboard (for data protection reasons we do not store mobile numbers). The system supports somewhere in the region of 90 registered members 99% of whom have opted into receiving our email notifications. I apologise for the lengthy pre-amble.
Very occasionally someone forgets their password to log in. Instead of using the Forgotten password link, for some unknown reason they see a link called "Register now for your login to Voice Online Communities »" and go for that option. Following this link allows a registered user to register for the public area of the website (despite already being registered in the private area), but it doesn't restore their password. I then get a new message asking me to approve the registration request, that I always reject as there doesn't seem to be any point (they are already registered). I then ask them to follow the proper link to reset their password. But having rejected this application (for the public area) affects their registration in the private area of the website and if they have opted into receiving email notifications it opts them out. This is really inconvenient as I not only have to take them through the process to get them up and running again (through the resetting up of their password), but I then have to take them through the process of re-opting in to receive email notifications. Some of our members are quite computer savvy whilst others struggle.
The reason for this report is that today one of my longer standing members has tried to gain access using the "Register now ... " link rather than using the "Forgotten password ..." link. Although my comment was dated November 2021 I still don't know whether or not this is a system bug, and I'm sure that I reported the issue before Nov. 21.
The system bug appears to remove consent to receiving email notifications to any applicant who is already registered when they happen to be rejected when applying to join the Voice system using the "Register now ... " link.
In terms of receiving email notifications, can I suggest that the default option is changed from "No" to "Yes" for all registered members within the private area for any item published by the orgiansation, with the frequency set to "Instant" rather than "weekly". I would also suggest that the current default option "No" be retained for all other voice notifications - i.e. bug report, general support and new features.
Can I ask what purpose does this link (Register now for your login to Voice Online Communities ») serve? If it has limited purposes, can it be removed or hidden? It would certainly make my life a lot easier.
Kind regards
Alan
Hi Alan,
I've been looking into, and improving, some things around login/registration, which could include removing the Register now link on sites whose Membership Policy is Private (i.e., sites that don't want people to freely join or ask for membership).
The Register now link is important if you want users to be able to create an account in order to join your site. Especially for sites with their own domain name, as the option would be to tell users to go to e-voice to create an account, then come back to the custom domain to log in, which would be a worse experience.
I'll also look into the case where people use Register now and use an account that already exists. I would expect this to redirect the user to the forgot password link automatically (or at least tell the user to do so). Registering again for an account that already exists should be impossible!
It could be the case that a user's account has expired and been deleted due to inactivity, and then they have created a new one with the same email address?
Thanks
Joe