E-mail addresses turn out to be unique because e-mail systems require them to be that way. So by making that the login one gets a unique user name without requiring the system to do any checking. I might add that no administrator (as in me) has to monitor and manage the database to make sure that no duplicate logins occur.
Most of the places I log-in or register these days seem to be asking for the e-mail address as the userID. It is pretty standard. (And remember folks, you can get an email address from your members and they can promplty turn off all the emails if they don't want to hear from you.)
I don't see the point of providing an alternative such as the MemberID. All of the features of Wild Apricot revolve around using e-mail.
We are creating dummy e-mail addresses for old member records, however, we are Archiving those records. (One of the problems I've encountered is that my formula for creating dummy e-mails created duplicates among our database which I only discovered during the upload process.) If the member comes along with new information and an e-mail address we reactivate the record and put in the email address.
We plan to look at records with bad contact information and reach out to members asking them to provide new information, including e-mail addresses.
For members who have no e-mail address, we are contemplating teaching them how to create e-mail addresses with any of the many free services so common today.
This day and age it seems a disservice to members to enable them to have no e-mail address. And it may be a disservice to allow them not participate in change. I am trying to take a stance that Wild Apricot is new and we need to take advantage of these new changes. . . . Rather than saying, well you are right, we have done things this same way for 15 years and we should let our members keep doing them the same old way . . . Even though we are implementing Wild Apricot to move away from some of the constraints from those old systems.