E-mail without registration; registration without e-mail

[dmaynes]

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

[ffrsqpilot]

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.

Not that it matters now but when we first started up the unit websites several members were intially logged on with their email address. Due to issues, some of those members dropped their internet provider and went with another company. When they got back up on the internet and tried to log on to the unit website they were unable. I believe they were using the same email address but for some reason the website would not recognize it. At the time I was a ward clerk and from my home computer I could use the members email address and log on but they couldn't. Does it have to do with the internet provider as well as the email address?

I haven't had to deal with this for awhile now since becoming the stake clerk but I've often wondered why after changing providers the members had problems getting back on.

Just wondering!

[russellhltn]

When they got back up on the internet and tried to log on to the unit website they were unable.

A couple of comments: As far as I know, none of the church websites use email as a logon. However, it may accept a email as a "user name". Either way, when they first try to connect, they'd need to use their old email address to login. And if they used their email as their login ID, they'd have to continue to use their old email address even after they update their profile - because it's an user ID, not email ID.

I don't know why you'd be able to login and they couldn't unless the ISP was filtering something. (I assume they're using their old computer. Maybe the new computer didn't have something installed/enabled.)

[ffrsqpilot]

Actually you are right - it wasn't their email but their password that they used once they were back up on line with another ISP. It was after they tried logging back on with their password that they were unable to connect. I was able to from my home computer using their password but they couldn't from their home. Thus I thought perhaps it had something to do with a new ISP.

Sorry about the confusion - as I mentioned I'm not the most computer savvy person you've ever met!

[AileneRHerrick]

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.

Another idea for a future version of LUWS, is to have the web administrator be able to add custom mailing lists (such as "Weekly Updates from the Ward Website") and then people interested in receiving emails on that list would simply check the box (like the check the box for Relief Society, etc...). Then the people who want to receive it, receive it... and the people who don't want to receive it, don't.

I'm not sure how the authentication process would work for adding email addresses for members that aren't registered. I can see how that could be a convenience for administrators and a concern for the Church.