Wordpress Club Application Plugin WordPress
I have a need to have a membership application process through WordPress for a club. Basically this is the process I am looking for:
- User creates account on WordPress.
- User can then submit an application form. This application form includes email addresses for the people who are already club members and are sponsoring their application.
- Once submitted, the sponsors receive an invitation email. They can create a new account or log in using an existing one. The supporter can then fill out another form with details regarding the applicant.
- All of these forms are stored under the applicants "folder" (some kind of backend interface) and viewable by an admin.
I was wondering if anyone knew of any plugins out there already that had similar functionality?
Answers (2)
Svilen Popov answers:
You can use [[LINK href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/"]]Contact Form 7[[/LINK]] + enable the registration option (Administration > Settings > General).
Chuck Mac comments:
To my knowledge Contact Form 7 does not have any ability to:
- Delivery an email notification to specified user.
- A backend folder to view applications (everything is emailed).
I thought about Gravity Forms as that at least has a backend system, though it is not as robust as I had hoped for (being able to create folders for the different applications).
Paul Gregory answers:
When you say "This application form includes email addresses for the people who are already club members and are sponsoring their application.", do you mean that the sponsor is entering them or selecting them?
If entering, then given that you also imply that there is an application form for existing members to get a website account, there appears to be a not insignificant flaw - I could pluck the names of luddite-ish members from a news piece, create @gmail accounts for them and then quote them in my application knowing that my fake account would be approved and subsequently I could use them to approve myself.
Regardless of whether applicants are entering the addresses or selecting them, the functionality you seek is a bit too specific for there to be a plug-in so you will need to configure a form plugin.
There is a save-to-DB plugin for Contact Form 7, but Gravity Forms is far superior.
Gravity Forms doesn't do folders as such but it does group entries from the form together by form and you can write code to display form input in different ways so it is extensible. You appear to hit on a need to be able to see all submissions from all forms that involve a particular email address - which would make a good plugin.
You can rig Gravity Forms to send a notification to a single email address entered (or selected) during the process, and you could choose that address to be the sponsor rather than the applicant. But you seem to want multiple sponsors. (It may be possible to use a hidden field that is filled by the compound answers to Sponsor 1, Sponsor 2 and Sponsor 3 but that would mean each sponsor would see the other sponsors addresses).
You do also need a frontend view of at least some of the form details so that sponsors can confirm that the person applying is indeed someone they know.
You therefore get a situation where, once logged in, a potential sponsor should only see the applications that he has been cited in.
I don't know how complicated your form is for the sponsor to fill in, or whether sponsors should be able to see other sponsors' feedback, but you may find it worthwhile to consider using custom post types and comments to achieve things.
It's all rather messy.
I can imagine that one of the goals of your process is that when admins look at the application they have all the information ready, and if they don't check applications for a bit that doesn't cause a delay in collecting info from the sponsor.
So, may I suggest a simple set-up in Gravity Forms:
* Form for applying and naming sponsors, with admin-only fields "sponsor 1 received", "sponsor 2 received"
* Form for sponsoring, available to logged-in users only.
* Explanation on the applicant confirmation email and screen that they can speed up their application by asking their sponsors to fill in the sponsor form online.
This then shunts the complicated part of sending notifications to multiple sponsors the applicant's task, and opens up the possibility of this bit being done via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, telephone etc contacts.
Obviously, this system would be better with an admin screen that viewed applications and sponsor forms together but this wouldn't be essential as it would be sufficient to flip between forms and use the search facilities. Using admin tickboxes to confirm that sponsor feedback has been received would mean that you can easily handle the receipt of verbal or written feedback.