Setting and Changing Passwords

Overview

In Wild Apricot based sites, every contact can access their profile or other restricted content by using your site's login feature (e.g. the login box). They will login using their email address and a password which is set by them or an administrator.

This password can be set at different times using one of the following approaches:

• When administrators import records (see Import)
• When administrators manually set/edit passwords (see editing contact details)
• When contacts/members reset their password after they signup (e.g using the password reset feature)

Settings a password while importing records

• Your users may already have an existing password if you are transitioning from another membership management system.
• If so you can import these passwords by mapping this field during import (see 'Passwords' under Import field guide).
  • You can also use an import to bulk update all your contact passwords if they were missed in the original import, see Bulk update
• If you do not set a password then the system will set one for them which your contacts will be able to change using the 'forgot password' feature (see below).

Sending password setting instructions to multiple contacts or members

Instead of sending password setting (or resetting) instructions to your contacts individually you can send these instructions to them in bulk.

To do this:

• Do an advanced search to select the contacts you would like to send these instructions to
• Once you have your recipient list in the search results click on the [Email Contacts] button to draft a new email 
• In the body of the e-mail insert the  "Contact Password Reset URL" marco (see Using macros in emails)  - this will insert a special link that will allow your recipients to reset their password.
• Click [Preview and Send] to send the password reset email to your contacts.

Once your recipients receive the e-mail they will need to:

• Click on the link generated by the Contact Password Reset URL marco (e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/sys/ForgottenPasswordRequest)
• This link will  take them to a password resetting page where they will need to enter their email
• Once they enter their e-mail they will receive a new automatic email which includes a link to a page to create a new password
• Once they enter their new password (see "reset your password" below)  they can use the newly created password to login to your web site 

Editing contact/member passwords directly

• If you browse to a contact record you will see options to [Email new password] to contact or [Edit] their existing password.
• For security reasons their existing password is not visible to administrators - however administrators can reset the password for any contact.

Automatically sending passwords to new contacts

• Password can also be included in the automatic emails that are set under Settings > Contact settings > Password email

If someone forgets their password

• They can reset it themselves using the password reset feature (see Self Service Password recovery below).
• If the email they enter is not valid, they will see a message so they know to contact an administrator to correct their email/reset their password.
• The administrator can do this using the password reset button [Email new password] (see below).

Note: this password reset link will only be valid for 24 hours from the time the email is sent.

Self-service password recovery

• If a member or contact wishes to reset their password, they can use the Forgot password link on your site (under the login box)
• Once they've  entered their email address on the 'Reset password' page an e-mail will be sent to the address they've entered 
• In this email they will see a special encrypted link that allows them to reset their password. 
• This link will also expire automatically within 24 hours of the e-mail being sent. Which means contacts/members must reset their password using this link before it expires.

Password Requirements

• Minimum of 3 characters
• Maximum of 50 characters
• Any combination of letters, numbers and characters (except spaces)