Shoppers who are registered but un-enabled and un-activated

[dmb]

Joomla 3.6.5
Virtuemart 3.0.16

Maybe someone can see what's going on here ...

I regularly get requests from people who say they've registered on our website but can't log in. Usually when I check they're not enabled and not activated, so I assume they've failed to click the activation email link or something, change their password and set the request new password flag.

However I've been looking into it, and there are a reasonable number of people who have bought something from our shop, so have a Joomla login and are Virtuemart shoppers, and all their Virtuemart details are correct. However they are shown in the Joomla user management as never having logged in, not enabled and not activated.

So how can they have bought something without logging in ?? The Joomla registration date and time (2017-02-02 12:17:30) is very close to the Virtuemart order date and time (2017-02-02 12:17:43). The Joomla users table has an activation string and a password set, a last_visited date of "0000-00-00 00:00:00", but the blocked flag is also set.

Confused - definitely I am

David

[jenkinhill]

It has been like this for a long time. I have never used registration confirmation by email on any of my VM sites, and on most I just use guest checkout, with the objective of never putting a shopper off going through the buying process, so this has never bothered me.

Yes, even if you require Joomla registration and email confirmation is required and in VM Config "Only registered users can checkout" is set as a required option, in default VM having completed the registration form  a shopper can choose to ignore the default registration message or just read the first part:

Registration Completed!

Your account has been created and an activation link has been sent to the e-mail address you entered. Note that you must activate the account by clicking on the activation link when you get the e-mail before you can login.

All they have to do is confirm the purchase and the sale is made.  They will subsequently get the email to confirm registration, which they may simply ignore as they actually don't want to register on the site.  Because they are not registered in Joomla they cannot use their login username/password, and if they try to register again with same username etc then they will fail and get the error message "Save failed with the following error: Username in use.". So could be another sale lost!

I guess you could use overrides to hide the confirm purchase button unless they are logged in within Joomla, but I have never needed to do that. LIfe is so easy for the shopper if you just use guest registration, or at the very least, turn off the requirement for email confirmation of registration.

[dmb]

That's really helpful, thanks ! It explains a lot.

What seems to happen is that they "purchase" free membership, which requires them to enter shopper details (and password), then as you say they ignore the activation email, and later come back and try to log in with the username and password they've chosen ... boom, username is blocked !

Unfortunately on our site the price of most goods depends on the user's shopper group, which is only available when they're logged in so I guess I'll have to live with the "I can't log in ... " emails. Luckily the member discount is enough to motivate most to get in touch.

[Jörgen]

Why don´t turn off the requirement for email confirmation of registration ? The account is created in anyway, so why also block the users You want as returning customers ?

regards

Jörgen @ Kreativ Fotografi

[dmb]

That sounds like a great idea Jorgen ... but I don't see any option like this in Virtuemart configuration (or in Joomla configuration).

Sorry if I'm missing the obvious but could you point me in the right direction ?

Thanks,

David

[jenkinhill]

Joomla User manager under options: set New User Account Activation to None

[dmb]

Ahh thanks, I found this one but assumed it then applies to people who register on the website through Joomla ... I need to think whether not having them verify their email addresses would be a problem ...

I'll try it out on the test website and see what the flows are like.

Cheers,

David