My Dolphin site is set up with paid member levels. Basically, the idea with paid member levels is to limit use the site to people have to upgrade their membership. Unfortunately, with Dolphin, you have to allow people to sign up for free with the standard membership before they can upgrade to a paid membership. My problems would be solved if there were some way to charge for a standard membership ( I can't understand why this isn't a stock feature of Dolphin) but I don't see that this can be done.
The problem is that when someone registers for the site and gets a standard membership, even though they are blocked from doing most everything, they can still put "Hey contact me at my email address" or "See my site here" in their profile, they can add a status message such as "Come see my profile on Facebook at url". In addition, paid members can leave comments on the standard member's profile saying things like "Hey, I want to meet you contact me at my email address". Worse, even though standard members are blocked from using the message/PM function, paid members can PM the standard members, and standard members can read the PMs that can say things like "I see your membership won't allow you to use the PM so contact me directly at my email address".
The whole goal of having a paid membership set up is to encourage people to join with a paid membership. These work arounds that allow people to benefit from the site without a need to upgrade pretty much makes upgrading optional for members. Why should people upgrade when they can use the site to make contacts for free and direct people to their own website or Facebook profile to interact? Has anyone come up with a solution to this? Either requiring people to buy a membership before they can register on the site in the first place, hiding standard members until they upgrade, or at least blocking paid members from sending PMs to standard members.
