Will, Is there a way to do any one of the following?

A: Limit how many groups a person can join based on their role?

And/Or

B:  Limit the groups a person can see based on their role, and therefore be able to join.


I know there is a new group categorization feature coming, but will this allow certain roles to only be able to see, and join, certain groups?

My application for this is I want to be able to have people join a "public" group, but then charge them to join and access "premium" groups.

Depending on their subscription or role type, they will have access to specific number of groups, and or certain groups.

I want to have the flexibility whereby you could create subscription options where you can create options like:

- Silver membership =   Unlimited access to open groups; plus 5 premium groups, and 1 exclusive group
- Gold Membership =  Unlimited access to open groups; plus 10 premium groups, and 5 exclusive groups

PS  This is not for a porn site in case you were wondering. :)

Thanks

Posted By SilverSurfer on 30 Apr 2010 12:11 PM

PS  This is not for a porn site in case you were wondering.

damn!

Funny. But this is a cool idea. I would like to do something similar on a site I'm working on (in my spare time). Basically depending on your access level (subscribed role) you could see specific sets of groups to join.

+1

+1
I really like this idea. I could even see this working well with group templates. You could allow a club to pay for an exclusive group and provide them with a unique look and feel on the Group View page to differentiate it from free groups.

Bump for Will

I haven't had a chance to think this through yet, but here are a few thoughts

We could add role based security to the group type object.
- this would allow you to control visibility, management and membership availability

You have 10 groups that require a certain role in order to join
Each of those groups would need to belong to a specific group type and the group type would be the same.

Person A completes transaction which auto adds them to role associated with the group type used above.
Person A still has to actually join the group.

All the above not really a problem and I can see many benefits.

Where it becomes complicated

Membership to the actual group would not be related to the role associated with the group type.
Person A may have only purchased one year of access to the "premium groups". We would need to provide method of removing users from the groups based upon the expiration of the role assigned to the group type; not going to be fun and will require additional support.

Limiting access by quantity wouldn't be an issue. Limiting access by quantity broken down by group could be another challenge.


While I think this is a good idea, I need to see more interest. I am going to move this to the feature request forum.

Will. If you used one of the subscription tools that are out there to control access to roles based on a certain timeframe, wouldn't it work if you just created a certain page for premium groups and then set it to only be visible to people who are members of that role?

In that way when their subscription expired they would be removed from that role and would no longer be able to access the page that has the custom groups on it.

Would that work?

Yes, that would definitely work but I don't see that as a complete solution. That person is still a member of the group. That also means they still receive all notifications.

That might not be a bad thing. If the goal is to get them to renew then "teasing them" by letting them know about things that they can't access might actually be good since they would be more inclined to rejoin.

I think if there is an option for them to permanently remove themselves from that role then that should solve the issue. Some people may elect to still receive notifications just in case they want to rejoin.

I saw this module which lets people add or remove themselves to/from a role. Custom Role Manager http://www.snowcovered.com/Snowcove...geID=14316

Do you think it would work as I envisioned?

Ignore my previous post as I was confusing group membership with role membership.

Posted By SilverSurfer on 06 May 2010 10:20 PM

I saw this module which lets people add or remove themselves to/from a role. Custom Role Manager http://www.snowcovered.com/Snowcove...geID=14316

This is amazing! I really hope this is included in the AS register/account.

Will, pursuant to this issue, is it possible to make it easier for people to leave a group? On ActiveSocial.com you have to click twice before you can remove yourself from a group.

I would like to list the groups each person is a member of, and right underneath the group name have an icon to remove themselves from this group. Currently you have to click on the actual group link and go to the actual group page before you have the link to remove yourself.

Also, that link itself is easy to miss. I like to make things easy for users and the way it's setup there is not very clear cut.

Thanks

Posted By Will Morgenweck on 05 May 2010 08:56 PM

We could add role based security to the group type object.
- this would allow you to control visibility, management and membership availability

Will, is this possible with 1.9?

Hi John,
No, it isn't possible yet, but we are looking at this capability to the next feature release.