Forum Member vs Site Member vs Guild Member
As I've set-up an application and have registered a test user to see the application, I now am pondering the differences between the following:
A person who registers with Gamer Launch via my site to gain access to our forums but will not be an actual member of our Guild within the game of EverQuest. They may be an applicant, they may be someone who is an ally and is joining an open raid, etc. Do they need to "Apply" or go through some process such that I as the site admin can then give the appropriate rank?
How does this differ from someone who wants to actually apply to be a member of the Guild within the game itself?
Basically, is the "apply" process truly an application to the GUILD or is it an application to access to our website and then I need to make some extra separation in the application to indicate if the person wants access to just the website as an ALLY or if they are asking for website/forum access AND applying to the actual GUILD itself?
Applying on the site is really just that, applying to access the site. If you want to have a differentiation between ingame guild members vs allies, I would do that with ranks on the site. I would add a question on the application that would let the applying user tell you which of those two they are applying for. Then with the ranks, you could make allies only have access to specific things you want them to have on the site and give more to ingame guild members, etc.