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Guest memberships for entire classes

Forums: General Discussion
Created on: 05/25/11 04:36 PM Views: 1492 Replies: 8
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 4:36 PM

We’re thinking of exchanging guest memberships with everyone in our high school’s classes one year ahead and behind our class. Those classes both have CC websites. Are there any pros or cons that we might not have considered? Has anyone tried this? If so, has it been a good thing? Have there been any problems?

Although this guest exchange would be somewhat similar to a multi-year site, we’re not considering that because converting existing sites to a multi-year one looks difficult and because the other two classes can do similar guest exchanges with the classes ahead and behind them without involving us.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 5:22 PM - Response #1

I went the route of changing to Multi Year. It is easy to do, but I am not happy with my decision in several ways. The Message Center is not real intuitive for a Multi Site, as you basically have to know when the classmate graduated to find them. list ALL classmates in Multi Year does not work properly.

The only downside of Guests across website, is the classmate will have to maintain multiple profiles, one on each website. My classes are 1959 through 1961, and I decided most of them would not like that maintenance.

Class Creator is coming out with an Alumni Page enhancement later this year (I think!!) that will do exactly what you want, but no need to Profile on every site. If you could wait until then, it will be there for you. The more we ask for Alumni Page, hopefully it will move high in the priorities after CC 3.0 done.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 5:40 PM - Response #2

Hello!

I have two-3 year multi sites covering six years of our high school. The class members can go from site to site if they request it. This is what I did

1. Announced loudly and clearly on both sites that if they wanted to access the other sites that is was possible and to contact me. This way everyone knew others might visit.

2. If a classmate requested access rights, I added them to the class list and checked that they were not to be shown on class list. It does not affect our numbers or stats. I used their address from the other site and have a blanket password I give.

3. I then send out through email the class to a list of ONE an email to the known address telling them to use the email address the message was sent to to log in with the password and to change the password as soon as they got in.

4. I am not sure of all that they can do, but this is what I have discerned. They can post comments and their name appears. If you click on their name, you are taken to a place that looks like the bottom of a profile where all their comments are and you can subscribe to the "profile" for updates. There is no profile in actuality, but then one can get notified of comments posted. They also have an inbox and receive notices of messages received. They can return messages. This was learned by experimenting with an admin from the other site.

5. We have had no problems. No complaints. Only a small percentage requested access to the other site.

Please message me if you need more info. I may have left something out or been confusing. Or post a question here.

They do not write another profile. There is no place for them to do that. Just messages and comments.

M:O)

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 3:33 AM - Response #3

I think what you described is what I need. I'm in 63 and 62 and 65 all use CC for their websites. 62 is having a reunion very shortly and I"m getting requests from 62 members to access our 63 class for friends and possibly siblings to find missing classmates. I have already granted one or two from 62 as guest members on our 63 site, but I don't want to have 20 more guests, if there is generic way I can do this for those needing or requesting it. As our Admin, I am a guest on the other CC sites, and their admins are, in turn guests on my site - all duly noted being from the other class. I was a bit confused about which email address to use and the changing of passwords - that would only work for one person, no? And having a non-visible guest. I'm not sure how they would handle emails if no specific ID is present? Or is this strictly read-only access? What is the best way to grant general guest access to members of another class. We each only have one class per CC site. You did this a year ago, and wonder if there still has been no trouble, privacy or other potential issues? Thanks for the answers ... dick

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Edited 08/07/12 3:36 AM
Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 9:56 PM - Response #4

Hi, Dick. I don't know if you're responding to me, but I'll paste in some directions I wrote for our unlisted guest exchange with the classes of '61 and '63.

There's probably a lot more detail than you want, but I figured that’s better than going the other way. It's not as involved as it looks. Most of it is just a few obvious mouse clicks.

One thing I'd recommend that I didn't include in the directions is to paste in the class year before each last name of the guest members in the excel spreadsheet. That will keep them together in your Email the Class list of members, and that makes it easy to create a mailing list of just your class. These numbers don't show on the website because the guests are unlisted.


To send us your list of members:
Click on “Manage Classmates.”
In the “Download Class List” box, click on the “CSV” button.
Click on “Download Class List.”
Open this file with Excel.
Delete the rows of everyone except classmates who have joined your website.
Classmates who haven’t joined have blank cells in the “Last Update” column. Deceased classmates and guests are grouped together, identified in the first column. Select a row or rows to delete by clicking or dragging on the row numbers on the left. If you have selected classmates, check that the “Last Update” column in the highlighted rows is blank before you delete. To delete, right click on the selection and click on “Delete” in the popup box.
Delete all columns except First Name, Last Name, Married Name, & Email.
Deleting columns is the same as deleting rows, except you click on the column letters at the top.
Save the file. If Excel asks if you want to keep the file in the same format, click “Yes.”
Send the file to us as an email attachment.

To upload new members:
Click on the Excel file that we emailed to you, download it, and save it.
Click on “Manage Classmates.”
Click on “Upload Classmates.”
Click on “Browse.” Don’t click on “Reset Classmates,” which is nearby.
Find and click on the Excel file.
Click on “Open.”
Click on “Upload Classmates,” carefully avoiding “Reset Classmates.”

To change members to unlisted guests:
In a word processor, write the password to be assigned to all the guests, e.g., class62. Select it and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl C).
Open your website and our Excel list of guests side by side.
Click on “Manage Classmates.”
Click on “Enter/Edit Classmates.”
In this list find the first name in the excel file.
*Click on “Details” by the name.
By “Show on Class List,” click on the “No” button.
Click on “Save Changes.”
Paste the password into the box that appears (Ctrl V).
Click on “Save Password.” (The member’s name will now be under Guest Members on the Enter/Edit Classmates page. Unlisted guests are listed first.)
Find the next guest member’s name & repeat from step *.

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Edited 08/11/12 10:05 PM
Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 11:04 PM - Response #5

Reset Classmates isn't as scary as Lane makes it out to be. If you click that, it doesn't automatically erase your classmates. It does give you a chance to choose which ones to reset and it only allows deletion of classmates who have NOT joined your website yet. You are allowed to to RESET if you just cancel the page.


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Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 11:04 PM - Response #6

Reset Classmates isn't as scary as Lane makes it out to be. If you click that, it doesn't automatically erase your classmates. It does give you a chance to choose which ones to reset and it only allows deletion of classmates who have NOT joined your website yet. You are allowed to to RESET if you just cancel the page.


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Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 11:05 PM - Response #7

Reset Classmates isn't as scary as Lane makes it out to be. If you click that, it doesn't automatically erase your classmates. It does give you a chance to choose which ones to reset and it only allows deletion of classmates who have NOT joined your website yet. You are allowed to to RESET if you just cancel the page.


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Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 11:05 PM - Response #8

Reset Classmates isn't as scary as Lane makes it out to be. If you click that, it doesn't automatically erase your classmates. It does give you a chance to choose which ones to reset and it only allows deletion of classmates who have NOT joined your website yet. You are allowed to to RESET if you just cancel the page.


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