E-mail without registration; registration without e-mail
Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:48 am
It may be appropriate to move this post beneath the LUWS wish list.
Even though I have been a ward website administrator for only a short time, I have come to understand the registration challenge with the current LUWS. To access the LUWS members need their membership record number, confirmation date, and the motivation to register. This last item seems especially challenging. I can distribute instructions, the registration information, and talk the website up, but it seems quite challenging to even get some members to fix their stale e-mail addresses.
One of the problems with the current design is that you cannot register for the website without providing an e-mail address, and you cannot provide an e-mail address to the website without registering. You also cannot delete an e-mail address after you are registered.
I have been sending out weekly e-mail updates to the ward which have been positively received. Members appreciate having the information come to their inbox without being required to access the website. Of course, the website has a lot more information than can be shared in a weekly e-mail update. And, I provide teasers to encourage website use. This experience has led me to believe that merely adding a member's e-mail address to the website would be a huge benefit, even if the member never accessed the website and never even registered.
On the other hand, I have a few members who do not want to receive a lot of e-mail. They don't even want to receive the e-mail update, but they would like to access the ward website. The current design doesn't allow this, unless the member provides a garbage e-mail account. If they provide a defunct e-mail account, I will contact them and ask them to update their e-mail account. If I disable their website account so that they do not receive e-mails, they will not be able to access the website.
The suggested changes are quite simple:
1- Allow registrations without e-mail addresses,
2- Allow a registered user to remove their e-mail address,
3- Allow a website administrator to modify any e-mail address (this suggestion has been made elsewhere),
4- Allow a website administrator to remove any e-mail address, and
5- Allow e-mail addresses to be added for unregistered members.
As has already been mentioned elsewhere, it would be good to synchronize the e-mail addresses in MLS with LUWS. It seems like this synchronization would be most beneficial if the LUWS e-mail addresses take precedence over the MLS e-mail addresses, because the members can maintain their own e-mail addresses using LUWS.
Thanks,
Dennis
Even though I have been a ward website administrator for only a short time, I have come to understand the registration challenge with the current LUWS. To access the LUWS members need their membership record number, confirmation date, and the motivation to register. This last item seems especially challenging. I can distribute instructions, the registration information, and talk the website up, but it seems quite challenging to even get some members to fix their stale e-mail addresses.
One of the problems with the current design is that you cannot register for the website without providing an e-mail address, and you cannot provide an e-mail address to the website without registering. You also cannot delete an e-mail address after you are registered.
I have been sending out weekly e-mail updates to the ward which have been positively received. Members appreciate having the information come to their inbox without being required to access the website. Of course, the website has a lot more information than can be shared in a weekly e-mail update. And, I provide teasers to encourage website use. This experience has led me to believe that merely adding a member's e-mail address to the website would be a huge benefit, even if the member never accessed the website and never even registered.
On the other hand, I have a few members who do not want to receive a lot of e-mail. They don't even want to receive the e-mail update, but they would like to access the ward website. The current design doesn't allow this, unless the member provides a garbage e-mail account. If they provide a defunct e-mail account, I will contact them and ask them to update their e-mail account. If I disable their website account so that they do not receive e-mails, they will not be able to access the website.
The suggested changes are quite simple:
1- Allow registrations without e-mail addresses,
2- Allow a registered user to remove their e-mail address,
3- Allow a website administrator to modify any e-mail address (this suggestion has been made elsewhere),
4- Allow a website administrator to remove any e-mail address, and
5- Allow e-mail addresses to be added for unregistered members.
As has already been mentioned elsewhere, it would be good to synchronize the e-mail addresses in MLS with LUWS. It seems like this synchronization would be most beneficial if the LUWS e-mail addresses take precedence over the MLS e-mail addresses, because the members can maintain their own e-mail addresses using LUWS.
Thanks,
Dennis