I'm looking to implement a membership system where there are several different levels of membership. For example
- Institution
- Properties
- Name
- Address
- Telephone
- Owner (Joomla User)
- Richard
- Members (Joomla Users)
- Nurul
- Jose
- Type (User Group or Access Level)
- Full, Associate or Affiliate
- Properties
In the example above, Richard is the admin / owner of the Institution, and has assigned Nurul and Jose as Instituion Members.
This scenario doesn't fit in with the default model of Joomla Users, so I'm trying to get my head around the best approach. So far I have the following
- Institution
- Custom component to handle custom properties stored in it's own database table
- When a Institution is created, a User Group is dynamically created (using the Institution Name), and assigned to the relevant Access Level depending on the selected Institution type (Full, Associate, Affiliate)
- Members
- Will be Joomla users
- Custom properties will be handled by a third-party plugin i.e. RSMembership
- When a Member is created / assigned, they will inherit the User Group / Access Level from selected Institution
Questions I'm still trying to figure out are
- Is this a suitable approach for Joomla?
- Should the Institution type be a User Group or an Access Level?