Tips on doing user email address validation / DIY account activation in EE

Question

I'd like to be able to offer some preliminary "logged in" features immediately to users after they register on the site, rather than requiring that they first click an activation link in an email. However, I do want to validate member email addresses.

So, at some moment after registration, I do want to email the new members something like an account activation link that they click to verify that they have entered a valid email address.

Has anyone done this in EE? Any tips? Any gotchas? Ideas for a best approaches?

In terms of the EE member permissions / back-end, I think it'll work simply enough to register users directly into a "New Members" group, and then, upon email verification, move them into a "Verified Members" group.

I'm working with Profile:Edit, and likely will be adding CartThrob in the future (so, want whatever I do to work with ecommerce check-out). I could see MX Notify fitting in here, as a way of automatically triggering an email to the user.

I don't think generating verification links for the email, or capturing them via templates in EE, should be too hard.

But, any thoughts on this? Is there an easier way?

Answer 1

You can definitely do this. General setup would be something like this.

• Set Require Member Account Activation? to No activation required
• Create a custom member field to indicate whether member has completed the email activation process. Email confirmed? : y
• For the pages (or specific elements) of the content you don't want them to access, run a check for the value of the custom member field (cmf). {if cmf_email_confirmed == ""}{redirect="/"}{/if} or {if cmf_email_confirmed}show this content{/if}
• You can use MX Notify to send emails to new members when they are activated by EE. In that email send a link to a page where they have to login (because you want them to know their username and password, right?). Then, once logged they need to view another page where they submit something simple, say their real name, city, or just "Are you ready to enter the Twilight Zone?" just so that you can have them submit a form that has a hidden field for cmf_email_confirmed to set a value of 'y'.

That should get you started.