How can we avoid staff users overwriting emails of utility WordPress accounts when testing CiviContribute pages?

Question

I installed the latest CiviCRM on WordPress. WordPress is set up to refuse new accounts to the public, and there are about 12 utility admin/editor related accounts not tied to a specific person: AdminCrm, Editor, Staff1, Staff2, etc.

There is an ongoing problem if the logged-in user uses or tests a contribution page, because CiviCRM mixes up the current WordPress login with the user's contact information. The person logged into WordPress is invariably a member of the organization, and if they renew their membership while logged into one of these utility accounts, the email address for the renewal is copied from that of the current login which results in a duplicate contact created.

It would be nice if there was some way to turn off this behavior. I think CiviCRM on Wordpress was designed to assume contacts were always linked to a Wordpress login. Need suggestions on how to handle this day-to-day.

Answer 1

You should also consider giving your staff their own personal user accounts for a number of reasons.

• It will be clear that they're acting as themselves rather than as a generic staff person
• You can isolate the culprit(s) who are recording memberships the wrong way (see Jon's answer), meaning they don't cause problems for others and you can talk with them specifically
• When people leave the organization, change roles, etc. you don't need to change the password for everyone

Answer 2

Ideally, the day-to-day workflow of entering contributions/memberships for your staff should be to use the back-end forms, not the front-end forms, so you don't experience this. However, to help with this transition, you may want to consider installing the "no overwrite" extension, which prevents the problem you're describing: https://civicrm.org/extensions/no-overwrite