For the AIRCO website, user profiles had to be auto-generated on admin approval, and a mail generated to the user.

The site was already running on a Joomla installation making use of the Community Builder suite, but some extra tweaking was needed to hook the site up to the member application backend.

The Process:
Potential member completes application form
Admin approves form
Profile is auto-generated and details are mailed to the member as follows:

1. Convert the member’s name to a valid username (the member can always edit this if it isn’t what they want)

$username = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $name ); //convert to alphanumeric
$username = trim($username); // remove any unnecessary whitespace
$username = substr($username, 0, 24); //ensure the length of the username doesn't exceed 24 characters

2. Ensure that the email address used is unique (this is tested on initial registration, but we re-test to be safe)

$query = "SELECT * FROM jos_users WHERE email = '$email'";
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
$check = mysql_num_rows($result);
if($check > 0):
	//flag as duplicate and exit
endif;

3. Check for duplicate username, and if one exists add a number on the end, retest and increment number until we get a unique value:

$n = 0;
$username_flag = '';
while($username_flag != 'set'):
	$query = "SELECT * FROM jos_users WHERE username = '$username'";
	$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
	$check = mysql_num_rows($result);
	$n++;
	if($check > 0):
		$username = $username.$n;
	else:
		$username_flag = 'set';
	endif;
endwhile;

4. Everything ok? Then we add the data:
a. Add
jos_users – name, username, email, password (remember to encrypt this with md5), usertype, gid, registerDate, params
jos_core_acl_aro – section_value = users, value = id of the record you inserted into jos_users, name = name of the member (as entered into jos_users)
jos_core_acl_groups_aro_map – group_id = id of the group your member belongs to, in my case 19 – Author, aro_id = id of the record you inserted into jos_core_acl_aro
jos_comprofiler id & user_id = id of the record you inserted into jos_users, then any other values captured for custom fields.

5. Finally email the member:

$to = $email;//captured from application form
$subject = "Your profile";
$body = "Dear ".$name."\n";
$body .= "You are now a full Member.\n\n";
$body .= "MEMBER'S AREA LOG-IN DETAILS\n";
$body .= "Username: ".$username."\n";
$body .= "Password: ".$password."\n\n";
$from = "FROM: ".$SENDERS_EMAIL_HERE;
mail($to, $subject, $body, $from);