ENHANCEMENT: Allow Use of Confirmation Message to Explain Approval Process

[tictag]

As at v1.3, the Approval Process for Membership Add On actively disables the Membership Level Settings >> Confirmation Message being displayed on the Membership Confirmation page. This is because, “The reason that the confirmation message is not included for memberships that require approval is to allow websites to hide this confirmation message from pending members. Sometimes confirmation messages may include content for member’s only.”

I believe this to be flawed logic and reduces the value PMPro might otherwise offer.

As a PMPro customer if I chose to install the Approvals Process for Membership Add On, activated the plugin, enabled it for my membership level, chose which option to use and saved my changes, I would be 100% aware that this particular membership level required approval so why would I then put member-only content in the membership confirmation message? It makes no logical sense.

But by actively disabling this confirmation message you are preventing PMPro customers from using that message to explain the approval process to as yet unapproved members. For example, “In order to confirm your membership, please do x, y & z and, following review, your membership will be approved”.

Furthermore, if you believe in the logic above (i.e. disabling the confirmation message is the right thing to do) then why do you allow the confirmation message to be included in the Membership Confirmation email when the ‘Check to include this message in the membership confiramtion (sic) email.’ is set? This is at best inconsistent application design.

I would suggest the following enhancements to the Approval Process for Membership Add On:

1. Remove the function that disables the Confirmation Message
2. Remove the function that creates a bespoke Membership Confirmation page
3. Add a function that serves as an ‘account status’ variable e.g. !!status!! = active or pending
4. Add the !!status!! variable to the default membership confirmation page e.g. “…your account is currently !!status!!”
5. Add the !!status!! variable to the default membership confirmation email template
6. Add the !!status!! variable to the default Email Templates Admin Editor Add On templates
7. Add the !!status!! variable to the Email Templates Admin Editor Add On Variable Reference

The above suggestions would radically simplify the Approvals Process for Membership Add On, allowing it to offer more value to PMPro customers with less complexity and developer overhead, in addition to, a more consistent user experience.

[tictag]

The function that hooks into the confirmation message is here: https://github.com/strangerstudios/pmpro-approvals/blob/dev/pmpro-approvals.php#L1119

[tictag]

As a workaround, the following hack should manually disable the code that disables the confirmation message:

function my_remove_approvals_confirmation() { remove_filter( 'pmpro_confirmation_message', array( 'PMPro_Approvals', 'pmpro_confirmation_message' ) ); } add_action( 'init', 'my_remove_approvals_confirmation' );