blacklisting email domains

[SteveE]

A couple of questions about the blacklisting feature:

Is it possible to blacklist domains for the free membership level and let users with those addresses still register a paid membership?

As admin, can I override blacklisting by manually adding a blacklisted address?

[The Assurer]

What you are requesting is not supported; simply because it is not practical, as such a system is still open to abuse. Also, you may be opening your site up to possible legal issues, and endless trolling.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish, with this kind of system?

[SteveE]

What I’m trying to accomplish is

1) Free access to the protected content on my site for students at specific universities which have already paid for them to view that content (they can register with email addresses from their unversities’ domains).

2) Prevent students at other universities (or anyone else) from accessing that content free of charge, but let them pay for access if they choose to.

This would be easier if your whitelisting/blacklisting feature could be set differently for free and paid membership levels. But I understand that you don’t enable that, and I can manage without it.

[The Assurer]

Have you looked at this?
Member Registration Via an Invitation Code or Password
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/member-registration-via-an-invitation-code-or-password/

It gives you a little more granularity, than just an email address. And if you are concerned about “code sharing,” you can always audit new memberships.

[SteveE]

Thanks for the suggestion. I might try the Invitation Code option later if I find my current method of manually checking email addresses of new registrations gets too burdensome. I’ve already given the relevant universities instructions for their students to register and I’m reluctant to change that very soon. But more immediately, there is one university I need to give free membership to, where students do not have institutional email addresses, so I might set up a separate membership level for them and use the Invitation Code method.

[Author]

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