Thread

So, I’m getting myself familiar with EE but I think I have a rather unique requirement and I’m not 100% sure if EE is capable of accomplishing it. Hopefully you can help.

I want to create an email-only (no password) based membership profile. Most of the membership functionality will be hidden and unused. Essentially, I want to build a profile for the purpose of customizing content throughout the site. I could do this by writing my own cookies and later querying them (I think) but I’d rather use the built-in membership functionality of EE.

Essentially, I’d prompt a visitor to enter their email. I have an existing database of potential visitors to the site that I’d have pre-populated. If the e-mail matches the database I’d pull additional data for other custom fields. Ie. Interests, past giving, etc. The visitor wouldn’t really be “logged in” in the traditional sense since there really wouldn’t be anything for them to manage client-side. However, from the site’s perspective, I’d be able to customize content based on their account. Upon returning, they wouldn’t be required to re-enter their email because it’d auto-login based on their browser’s cookie.

This possible or should I go the “design your own cookie management system” route? Or, do you have a better suggestion for accomplishing this goal?

Thanks.

Wouldn’t allowing such insecure membership access run into privacy concerns ie - what if someone else entered my email address?

Good question. The data we’d plan to match to would be “vague” and wouldn’t reveal anything we’d consider to be a violation of privacy. In addition, it would never be directly exposed to the visitor themselves. We’d simply use it to target content.

There is one sticky spot later in the process that I am still working through that may run into privacy issues like you’ve pointed out but I’m currently trying to work through that to minimize any potential for abuse. Ie. Using our site as an email->name lookup.

Hi coopooc,

Thank you for your interest in ExpressionEngine and welcome to the Forums!

What you are after sounds more like a “relationship” system than a Membership system.

ExpressionEngine won’t allow vacant passwords, so the native Member Module wouldn’t be a good fit.

I could see a way to do this using SafeCracker, to collect visiter input and “loosely” validate that against your list. The then content could be related back to each user with Pixel & Tonic’s Playa.

Full implementation would take a bit of testing, but I think that would be a fair start!

Cheers,