CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Just wanted to check to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious. From threads like http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=1528.0 it seems that CiviCRM should be able to handle "free" memberships, but I can't seem to set one up.

First, I created a new contribution page to accept registrations from new volunteers; all fields are unset on the Contribution Amounts screen and the checkbox is disabled under Membership Settings. I can save the page without any objections, but trying to load it produces the error

• Quote

  Sorry. A non-recoverable error has occurred.
  
  The requested online contribution page is missing a required Contribution Amount section or Membership section. Please check with the site administrator for assistance.

The identical error appears if you try to configure a membership form on drupal.demo.civicrm.org without contribution levels or membership settings.

Ultimately, I got around the problem by setting a "Volunteer" level with a membership fee of $0, then creating a custom template for CRM/Contribute/Form/Contribution/Main.tpl  so that I could suppress the ugly "Contribution Amount: $0" field. Is this the "proper" way to set up a free membership?

Thanks. You don't need to add a custom template to get it to work, but you do need to add a custom template to hide the membership type with fee level of 0.