We released news of Clubs just under a year ago for Invision Community 4.2 and it has been the best received feature to date.
Clubs opens up new ways to run your community by allowing members to create sub-communities away from the central forum area.
Since the feature was released, we've collated an immense amount of feedback on the feature. Here's what we're improving for Invision Community 4.3.
Paid Club Memberships
If you have Commerce installed on your community, 4.3 adds the ability for members to create paid clubs. Users wishing to join the club will be required to pay a membership fee (which can be one off or recurring) which will be paid to the club owner, minus any commission you want to keep for the site. You can choose which groups can create paid clubs.
Paid Club Settings
If enabled, the club directory will show the price for membership in each club.
Club directory with paid clubs
The process for joining works a little differently depending on the type of club...
- For open clubs, the user will immediately be prompted to pay the joining fee. Once they have paid, they are added to the club as normal.
- For closed clubs, the user will need to request to join as normal. Once they have been accepted to join the club, they will then be able to pay the membership fee, after which they'll be added to the club.
- For private and read-only (a new type in 4.3, which we'll talk about below) users have to be invited to join the club
- Public clubs have no membership, and so cannot be paid.
Joining a paid club (a closed club in this screenshot)
Paid club after request to join has been accepted
Paying for club membership
Club leaders can also waive the membership fee, allowing certain users to join the club for free.
Waiving fee when approving request to join
Waiving fee when inviting members
Waiving renewal fees on an existing member
If a member fails to pay their renewal charge, they are moved into an "expired" state. The club leaders can see the status and renewal date for all members, and use the filter tools to just see active or expired members.
Club members management
Paying out membership fees works just as it does with paid files in Downloads. Users receive the amount as account credit. If enabled, they can then request a payout of this via PayPal or a manual payout method you want to use.
Viewing an invoice in the AdminCP where some payment has been given to a member
Viewing account credit with options to withdraw funds
Club content throughout the community
Currently content in clubs is only visible within the club itself. In 4.3 a new setting allows you to show the content from clubs throughout the community - for example, if a club contains a forum, that forum can show in the main forum list.
Club forums showing on main forum list
This is a single toggle: if enabled, all content from clubs that each user has joined will show throughout the community, appearing below the normal categories/etc in that application.
New Club Type: Read Only
In addition to Open, Closed, Private and Public, we have added a new club type in 4.3: read only. In a read only club, everyone can (without joining) view everything in the club, but cannot participate unless they are invited by a club leader.
Following
Users can now follow a club, and will then receive notifications about all new content in the club - the same as if they followed every content area in the club.
List View
In addition to the current grid layout of clubs, there is a new list-style.
Clubs List View
The admin can choose which views are available and what the default should be.
AdminCP Approval
You can now filter the list of clubs in the AdminCP to clubs requiring approval and approve clubs from within the AdminCP.
Approving clubs in AdminCP
Deleting Content Areas
Club leaders can now delete content areas within their clubs. This can be useful if, for example, the leader added a club feature by mistake.
Content areas can only be removed if there is no content within it, or if you have granted club leaders the ability to delete content in their clubs (since they would be able to empty it).
Ability to remove features from clubs
Other Minor Tweaks
- You can now set per-group the maximum number of clubs a member in that group can create.
- A member invited to join a club can now delete the invitation if they do not want to accept it (rather than just ignoring it).
