Although we still offer basic, Free membership, and Paying membership which entitles you to receiving our print magazine Pagoda World and our news letter, as well as full access to our technical manual, the membership system has been completely revamped on the new system.
A visitor to the site lands on the front page and sees a row of buttons at the top. These buttons allow him/her to Register (if he or she is not yet a member) or to Login.
Everyone who registers is a Basic Member of the Pagoda SL Group. The member can access their Profile using the modified button bar that appears after a successful login.
Logged-in Button bar
After logging in, this button bar appears, with additional options. The main one we are concerned with here is the Profile button which allows the user to:
change account related settings (including those required for full membership)
change preferences and settings on the board, for instance how the board looks, the order of messages, the kind of notifications received and so on
Profile
Profile Summary
After clicking on Profile, this profile summary appears. It shows you at a glance your name, title, membership status (Basic or Full Member), the number of posts, your ranking based on the number of posts, the date your first registered and when you were last active.
Profile Menu
In the profile menu at the left of the page you can perform Full Member Actions depending on your status. These comprise:
Join as a full member... you are asked to complete address details and payment options, and then you are taken to a Payment page. Here you can select to pay with PayPal (which is the recommended option, as it allows us to automatically activate your membership once we receive payment confirmation from PayPal) or you can choose postal payment with can take anywhere between 1 and 6 weeks to be processed;
Renew your membership... if you are already a full member you can extend your membership by an additional year. You can do this at any time, not just when your membership is due to expire;
Cancel your membership, which will prevent you from getting reminded that your membership is due to expire. Your active membership will not actually be stopped until the expiry date is reached;
Review your Membership History. That Membership History is essentially an audit trail of all activities on your account. It shows when you initiated a join or renew action, if a payment took place, if you or an administrator changed your status, or if a payment has been processed. All automated actions (such as sending you a reminder or expiry notice) are also logged.
Internally we keep two statuses, and your full membership is only activated when payment is received. Typically the system will automatically send you a warning e-mail when your membership is due to expire. After expiration we warn you again, and offer you a small grace period before your membership is actually de-activated.
Profile contents
Profile Contents
For a Full Membership we require additional information over and above the details provided for a basic membership. We need a valid postal address to send Pagoda World to, and payment details. We keep track of:
your full membership status (have you tried to join?)
your active membership status (have you paid, and aren't you expired yet)
your last payment date
your current expiry date
the currency and amount paid
Your Membership History shows an audit trail of your account... when you did what, when the system sent you notifications or when the system or an administrator changed your status, and if payments have been processed. If you have any queries, check your membership history and if that does not tell you all, just contact the membership administrator at membership@sl113.org.
Membership Lifecycle
This article describes the typical membership lifecycle. It is intended as an aide for users and administrators to understand how the system works.
a guest finds our website and looks around. After a while of lurking they decide the site is interesting and they want to post.
the guest registers an account, gives their e-mail address (otherwise they will not receive the activation e-mail) and activates him or herself. Thereby they acknowledge and agree with our terms of use. The user is now a Basic Member.
after a while, when the user finds the forum useful, they find out about the distinction between Basic and Full members, and they decide they want to belong to the club. The member executes the Join as a Full Member action on the Profile page. He is prompted to provide his real world name and address. At this point the system sets the "fullmember" flag to true.
the user is lead to the payment page. At this point they still have the option to not complete this part of the process. Hence memberships are not activated until payment is received. At the payment page, PayPal is offered, as is manual payment. At this point two options are open:
PayPal is chosen. A transaction is performed. If the user is a known PayPal user with a balance in his account, the payment is authorised immediately. If the user pays using a credit card, the payment may take a while to be authorised. When PayPal authorises the transaction, it performs a Payment Notification to our site. The software here matches that to the user, and if it can do so it will proceed with step 5.
Manual payment is chosen. The user sends a check or initiates a transfer to one of the accounts shown. As soon as we receive the funds (which may take up to 6 weeks) one of our moderators goes into the system and proceeds with step 5 using a Handle Payment action.
When the payment confirmation arrives (either automatically from PayPal, usually within 24 hours, or manually up to 6 weeks later) the system matches that to the user. At this point the user's membership is Activated (activemember is set to Yes) and the Expiry date is adjusted with one year. Now the user is finally a Full Member.
About one month before the Expiry Date the user will receive an e-mail telling them their membership is due to expire. That mail will be repeated every 30 days.
At expiry, or when a set grace period is achieved, the membership will be deactivated automatically, or by manual action by an Administrator.
If the member has chosen to Deactivate their membership themselves, the reminder e-mails will stop.
