It’s a great idea for your amdram society’s website to have a member’s page which is only visible to members when they log in. This will usually mean that each of your members are set up in the “back end” of the website with a username and password.

If you do this, then it’s a fairly logical step to start using your website to manage all your membership subscriptions. (Actually, it’s worth doing this even if you don’t have each of your members set up already!)

First, why not set up an membership application form so that prospective members can apply online? In many ways it can be less daunting to make an application or enquiry online than to meet an established membership face to face.

What you then need is a system which records the relevant members’ personal details (address, phone, etc) together with their membership details (type of membership, amount paid, etc). Once you’ve captured the information, it should be straightforward for any system to present lists of all members, all paid-up members, all expired members and any other list you can think of. Such lists will only be visible to specific officials in your society, such as Secretary, Chairman or Treasurer. And you can allow certain people to update members’ data.

Ideally, the system should also be able to highlight those members whose membership expired beyond the time specified in your Privacy Policy for holding personal data. Thus, you will know which members’ data to delete to comply with GDPR.

Having a centralised record of member details makes it much easier to manage your membership details and should mean you are more likely to be compliant with your own Privacy Policy and GDPR.

AmDram Web Design is currently developing a membership subscription which should be available in early 2019 and can be applied to all websites built with Joomla.