Basic new->subscriber->upgraded flow?

Hi everyone —

I’ve read the FAQ’s and documentation, and have concluded I must be missing something obvious. Looking for pointers in the right direction.

I’ve installed, configured, and played with the plugin, and all seems fine. However, I want to get a basic workflow of:

New user->signs up->activates via email->is subscriber->upgrades->is upgraded

Or, in human terms, I want a new user to go through a fairly normal account creation process, following activation of their account by confirming their email, which then puts them into a typical WP “Subscriber” user role. What I’ve just described is pretty much stock WP, but instead using the UM plugin.

Where I’m stuck is that — once they’re a confirmed subscriber — I want them to be able to request an upgrade to a “private member”, which I can then review and approve. The functionality seems to imply UM handles this, but I cannot seem to make the transition from Subscriber to Private Member work.

Using the default registration form, setting it to my Subscriber role, works fine. I see the new user get the welcome email, the “activate your account” email, and so on. But it stays in the Subscriber role. How do they then upgrade to Private Member?

Okay, so I reviewed the FAQ’s and docs and decided to add a new form called “Upgrade” with a few fields (username, pass, do-you-want-to-upgrade) and it shows fine, but there’s no way to auto-fill the reserved fields for username and pass, so I end up with a new request record for [email protected]. Obviously, that doesn’t work. And I can’t seem to make it upgrade.

Now, I certainly CAN manually upgrade a user to that Private Member role, but I do not know whether a user wants this or not, so I shouldn’t make the assumption and upgrade every user. That’s why I want them to ask to upgrade. Or give them some ability to request the upgrade through some inherent UM capability. But I’m missing it…

Any suggestions? I don’t need anything too detailed; just pointers as to what I’m missing, or how I’m misunderstanding the workflow of the plugin.

Thanks!
Bruce