Membership Documentation

A practical guide for OHS volunteers, website administrators and members.

About this guide

This guide covers everything you need to know about managing Oral History Society memberships on the website and in Stripe. It is organised into three parts:

1. For members — self-service answers that members can use themselves, or that you can point them to.
2. For website administrators — the day-to-day admin tasks volunteers will carry out.
3. Special processes and technical notes — honorary members, offline payments, background information.

Need help?

If you are ever unsure, the safest option is to do nothing and ask for help at hello@sarahtamsin.com.

Golden rules

Before you do anything else, please read these. They will save you a lot of time and prevent serious problems.

Golden rules

1. Members should manage their own details wherever possible. The website and Stripe are designed for self-service. Direct members to the self-service FAQs unless you have a very good reason not to.
2. Never edit member data manually in isolation. WordPress and Stripe must stay in sync. Editing one without the other will cause problems that are difficult to fix.
3. Every new member MUST go through https://ohs.org.uk/join. There are no exceptions. The only workarounds are the special processes for honorary and offline-paying members documented later in this guide.
4. When in doubt, stop. The “switch to user”, “edit user” and Stripe dashboards are powerful. If you are not certain about an action, contact support first.