Reposting request here, as it was hidden possibly in general discussion under copyright.
"... for the sake of privacy for those that HAVE already joined the site, could it be possible to ask/request for the "JOIN US LINK" in the gray colored log-in box (top right) of the home page to have the option to "LINK" to the list of Missing Classmates instead of the entire list of Classmates Profiles? Then I could turn the Classmate Profiles page OFF to non-logged in members and therefore at least keep companies that want to copy my lists from access to all the members, including all those listed as deceased. (Which, by the way, I failed to mention the site that has copied all of the information on my site, also had a list of all the deceased and since I have everything locked down, the only place they could have gotten that information was from the classmates profiles page.) As even though you have to be logged in as a member of the site to see an individual members information, you can still extract by the icons listed a lot of information on the classmate profiles page, contrary to the list of Missing Classmates page.

Thank you in advance for your reply to this request! Crossing my fingers for a 'yes', will add the option. Obviously, I would simply put a link myself, but that does not stop visitors from clicking on the JOIN US in the gray log-in box and I don't want that to lead to no-where.

Tihs makes sense to me. Wishlisted.

Marla - So far, none of our classmates have had any complaints about privacy . . . but, would you mind sharing with us the name(s) of the company that copied your list and what they did with it?

I did exactly this on my website several years ago. I have Profiles turned off and I created a page called First Time Here. Through that page I link people to the Missing page where they can click their name and join.

You can't keep the Missing page from being public or those you want to see it would not be able to. But this does keep the identities of those who have already joined private from the general public.

In my case I did not want everyone to see the names of other members. Mine is not a class site. But in a class site you might want to make the Profiles page active but password protected. That way, once people join they can see the names/profiles of others, but not beforehand.

Barbara, IMO your method is actually better than the one suggested by CC. Brilliant. (That St Maarten airport is one of the things I need to experience!)

Like that idea. Just did a similar change on my class site thanks to this forum.

Marla,

I heard from the programmers that if you password protect your Classmate Profile page, but your Missing Classmate page is not password protected, the system will go to the missing classmate page, but the first page it checks is the Classmate Profile page.

True from the Login dialog only though. All the instructions that tell one how to join also need to be changed.

IOW, one can't just protect profiles without corresponding documentation changes.

What I suggest is to make the Profiles link behave the same as the Login link when Profiles is PW vs getting a Login Screen. That way it's both consistent and minimizes any documentation changes.

Doing it via the Missing is a much better way to Join and protect data.

I password protected the Classmates Profile page and renamed the Missing Classmates page to Classmates Not joined, added my own dialog below the header then moved it to the top of my website. I use a second computer to check it with a no login to the site. Works ok for me.

The issue is that I (and others) have created instructions for how to join with links to Profiles. IOW, I have to change the instructions and anything else that may mention Profiles. CC and many posts here give no clue to this behavior. So CC itself requires documentation changes.

Not that I can't change all that, but it would be a lot simpler if the Profile link would behave the same as the Join link. It would also be consistent behavior

Hi Rhonda,

Sorry, I just saw your post where you asked... "but, would you mind sharing with us the name(s) of the company that copied your list and what they did with it?" www.tree52.com is the name of the company I found when doing a google search for my class. As far as I saw, they basically have COPIED all my my classmates NAMES (including married names), to create a list of classmates for my graduation year (1981), additionally, they created a list of deceased, which they could discern from my list of classmate profiles due to the rose icon next to those that have passed. I was just offended that I allowed all that information to be viewed for more than two years now... and decided to ask for the JOIN US link to be TIED to the missing classmates list, as at least with that list visible to the public, you cannot get the entire list, as members are not on that list and you cannot get the list of deceased, or served in the military, as there are no icons denoting that type of information. Be sure and read what Kyle posted on this thread... I did it and it WORKS! So the programmers did not have to link the missing classmates to the JOIN US link as I had asked, there's a work around built into the system. Thanks!

THANK YOU KYLE!!!

Thought I was subscribed to this thread, but logged on late last night and FINALLY saw your posting, ANSWER TO MY REQUEST! I immediately went to my sites (Class 81 and 82) and made the change! Works like a charm, exactly what I wanted! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR REPLYING WITH THIS TRULY HELPFUL INFORMATION!!! GLAD IT WAS ALREADY THERE and no special time had to be committed to create this request! Tell the programmers THANK YOU for me, too! OH HAPPY DAY!

This thread describes real privacy concerns with so many coming together to looks at various solutions. Thanks all. I'd appreciate your thoughts on how we've approached reaching everyone. Names on our missing classmates page are only those classmates with NO contact info as set by our criteria--only 18 out of a class of 535. We have contact info in our database (most verified) for another 125 classmates who are in the database but have not registered on the web site. This means they get email messages and do join periodically. Do you keep your home page activated with log in or access only through missing classmates page with instructions? Our concerns would be massive database editing & thus removing class information from both the potential and the reluctant web site users. Thanks for any comments.

Thanks to Marla, I hid both my single class and multi class profiles with the missing open, as described above. However I had a problem I did not realize on the alumni site.

About two weeks ago, I used the Missing Classmate Override for one class. The purpose - to make the Missing Classmate list for that one class match their actual list. I should have realized that was not a good idea. A couple nights ago, a few members of that class went to the alumni site to join and guess what... they did not see their names. Dumb move on my part. My decision was to open the alumni class profiles or I would have had to remove the override for 200+ of the one class, which I will be doing very soon in order to hide the classmates profiles again.

So IF you have used the override for those you have found yet they have not joined your site... think about how you wish to handle it before you hide your classmate profiles.

Hi Donna,

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking how I have my site set NOW, as it pertains to actual missing classmates and classmates that have not joined but I do have current email addresses for them and they do receive emails from the site when I email the class. I actually edited my "Missing Classmates" and renamed it "Not Joined- Missing". Everyone that is not a MEMBER of my site is on that list, and I do not have any "overrides" checked, meaning have found them (such as on facebook) but they have not joined which would remove them from the "Not Joined- Missing" list. Therefore, everyone that is not a MEMBER of my class site is listed on the "Not Joined- Missing" list/page. If you want to see my site, as it looks to a visitor (non-member), please click on the tab view site in the left column under my name/picture on this thread. You should be able to view my home page and then you click on the JOIN US in the top right log-in box and it will bring up the Not Joined- Missing page/list.
I hope this answered your question. I did not have a lot of editing to do, as former instructions were similar, just changed in my instructions, the name of the page (from Classmate Profiles to Not Joined- Missing) they need to go to in order to find their name to join. By the way, I am not real fond of the name I chose but since the titles are character limited, this is all I could think of to imply some are missing and some are simply not yet members.
Thanks!

Marla,

Thanks for your explanation. I really appreciate hearing from you. I went to your site (beautiful custom home page--very welcoming and professional looking!) and checked the "Missing, Not..." and I can see how you reorganized the pages and instructions. You must have had to change the "missing" criteria as well. What are your criteria now? We have all the database information downloaded onto the internal "Details" portion of the profile. Only those classmates with no address in details will show up as "Missing". Then how do you show who is truly missing from your class database?

Thanks in advance.
Donna