Club Mode on DetectID — the complete guide for captains, admins and members

Club Mode is the framework that lets verified UK detecting clubs run their digital life on DetectID. Owners and two named admins get a year of free Premium, every joining member gets a free month of Basic, and finds can be tagged to the club they came from. This guide is the complete reference — the perks, the workflow, the privacy model, the anti-abuse rules, and where things are heading.

What you get at a glance

Who Club Mode is for

UK detecting clubs of any size, from a four-mate field permission to a 500-member FID-affiliated outfit. The system is designed around the reality of how clubs actually operate:

• A captain who registered the club and acts as the single point of contact. Stays on clubs.captain_user_id until ownership is formally transferred.
• Up to two trusted adminswho help with identifications, run meets, chase recordings, or manage member relations. They share the captain’s perk tier.
• A wider membership rosterwho get a foot in the door of paid features, can tag their own finds to the club, and (in Phase 2) appear in the club’s aggregate views.

Clubs that don’t hold formal FID/NCMD affiliation can still apply — verification is judged on real-world legitimacy (regular meets, named officers, a website or social presence), not paperwork alone.

The perks, explained in detail

Owner perk — 12 months of Premium

Lands on the captain’s account the moment they click Claim my owner perkon the club’s manage page (available only after the club is admin-verified). Premium for the owner includes the entire toolkit:

• 200 identifications per month
• Auction-record prices on every result (graded comparable sales)
• Collection valuation total on the insights page
• Rarity indicator (top 5% / 1 of <50 recorded)
• Insurance-grade PDF reports for the whole collection
• Historic OS map overlays (1840s–1960s) with swipe-slider
• Roman roads overlay
• Soil & geology overlay (clay / chalk / sand per field)
• Nearby PAS finds within 5 km of permissions
• Filter map by ruler / denomination / value range
• Productivity stats per site
• KML & CSV export
• Personal find-hotspot ranking
• Ad-free across the entire app

The 12 months runs as a wall-clock window starting the moment the perk is claimed. Nothing renews automatically when it lapses — the account gracefully reverts to whatever tier the user was paying for (or to Free if none).

Admin perks — 12 months of Premium each, up to two

Identical Premium toolkit, identical 12-month window. The owner picks the two admins from the manage page by typing the target’s DetectID username or signup email. The admin must already have a DetectID account.

Admin perks are nominations, not invitations — once issued, the perk fires immediately and the recipient gets a notification on their profile (and via email if they have notifications enabled). There’s no acceptance step.

The owner can remove an admin at any time from the same manage page. Removing an admin revokes their grant immediately — they keep what they’ve already used but lose the rest of the 12 months. (See Anti-abuse below for why.)

Member perk — 1 month of Basic

Auto-issued the moment a detectorist joins their first verified club. Lands as a 30-day lift on profiles.basic_until so the user immediately sees the Basic toolkit:

• 100 identifications per month (vs Free’s 3)
• Top-2 candidates with full reasoning chain on every result
• Predicted coin grade (F / VF / EF)
• Multi-photo gallery per find
• Save finds to your private collection
• Private detectorist diary
• Edit history per find (and one-click correction of the engine’s alternatives)
• Live session tracking and auto-pinning
• Field (offline) mode
• Tudor / Stuart mintmark dater, grading gallery, Treasure Act wizard

Strictly one lifetime grant per detectorist. Joining a second verified club does not retrigger the perk; joining a non-verified club does not trigger it at all.

Step-by-step — registering and verifying your club

Step 1: Create the club

1. Sign in to app.detectid.co.uk/clubs/new (you must have a DetectID account first; sign up free at /auth/login if you don’t).
2. Fill in the club’s display name, slug (the URL piece — e.g. norfolk-fid for /clubs/norfolk-fid), description, optional website URL, and optional contact email.
3. Submit. You’re now the captain and a member of your own club. The club shows up at /clubs with an unverified badge.

Step 2: Get verified

Verification is a manual step on our end — by design, to keep the perk pool honest. Email admin@detectid.co.uk with:

• The club’s name and slug as registered on DetectID (so we can find it quickly).
• Your FID / NCMD / regional affiliation (membership number if you have one). If you’re unaffiliated, that’s fine — see the next point.
• One piece of real-world evidence: a club website, a Facebook group with active posts, a list of recurring meets, a published chairman / secretary, or contact at the landowner running your permissions.
• Approximate member count — verifying a 250-person club is a different operational shape from verifying a 6-person mate group. Both are fine; we just want the lay of the land.
• Best contact for the club (email or phone). We won’t use it for anything other than verification.

We verify within one working day in the UK time zone (typically same-day). You’ll get an email confirmation when the verified badge is live.

Step 3: Claim your owner perk

1. Go to app.detectid.co.uk/clubs/[your-slug]/manage (only the captain can see this URL; everyone else 404s).
2. The new Club perks panel at the top shows a button labelled Claim my owner perk →. Click it.
3. 12 months of Premium lands on your account immediately. The button replaces itself with a confirmation showing the expiry date.
4. Your /settings/profile page now shows “Premium plan” with the expiry pulled from your plan_grants row.

Step 4: Nominate up to two admins

1. Still on the manage page, scroll to the Admins (0/2) sub-panel.
2. Type the admin’s DetectID username (e.g. @stuart) or the email they signed up with.
3. Click Nominate admin. Their 12-month Premium perk fires immediately. They appear in the Admins list with a Remove button next to their name.
4. Repeat for the second admin if you want a full bench.

Constraints applied at nomination time, with clear error messages:

• You can’t nominate yourself — captains can’t double-claim.
• You can’t nominate someone who already has an active admin/owner perk from any club.
• You can’t exceed two admins (the third nomination is refused with a clear message).
• The target user must already have a DetectID account — you can’t pre-seed grants for people who haven’t signed up.

Step 5: Onboard members

1. Point your members at the public clubs directory or directly at /clubs/[your-slug].
2. They click Joinfrom your club page. They’re added to the roster and (if it’s their first verified-club join) their 1-month Basic perk lands instantly.
3. Tell them to tag their finds to the club from the result page — a dropdown is now visible at the top of every find they own.

Tagging finds to the club

Every member sees a Club tagselector at the top of their own find result page. The dropdown is populated with every club they’re a member of (so if a detectorist is in three clubs, they get to choose). Saving the choice:

• Sets finds.club_id on the find row.
• Renders a small star-pill labelled with the club name at the top of the result page (visible to anyone who can see the find — the owner, anyone the find is publicly shared with).
• Counts toward the club’s aggregate stats in the upcoming Phase 2 admin dashboard.

Tags are change-as-you-like — pick a different club, clear the tag with the “— No club —” option, untag entirely. No history is kept of tag changes (they’re considered metadata, not attribution).

Tagging does NOT make the find more visible than the owner has chosen. Private finds stay private. Public finds stay public. The tag is metadata, not a sharing setting.

Privacy — who sees what

We do not exfiltrate location data through the club tag. Privacy precision on each individual find (exact / 1 km / 10 km / county / hidden) overrides anything Club Mode does. The club tag is a label on the find, not a key to it.

Tour of the manage page

Captains visiting /clubs/[slug]/manage see the following panels in this order. Everyone else gets a 404.

Club details

Edit the club’s name, description, website URL, and contact email. The slug is fixed at creation time — to change it, contact admin@detectid.co.uk (changing slugs would break inbound links).

Club perks (new in Phase 1)

The top of this section explains the deal in plain text. If the club isn’t verified yet, you see a message telling you to email admin to verify. Once verified:

• Before claiming: a single button — Claim my owner perk →.
• After claiming: a confirmation card showing the expiry date, plus the Admins (0/2) sub-panel.

Admins sub-panel:

• List of currently-nominated admins (max 2) with name, link to their public profile, and a per-row Remove button.
• A nomination form (visible only when fewer than 2 admins). Type username or email, click Nominate.

Members

Full membership roster — public profile links, join date, current role (Captain / Admin / Member). Currently view-only; Phase 2 adds last-active timestamps, lifetime finds tagged to the club, and export to CSV.

Transfer captaincy

Pick a current member from the dropdown and click Transfer. The new captain becomes the owner of the club; the old captain becomes a regular member.

Important behaviour around perks on transfer:

• The old captain keeps their existing owner perk (the 12 months that were already running on their account). They’re not punished for stepping down.
• The new captain does not automatically get a fresh owner perk. The club has already used one owner-grant slot from its lifetime allowance. Email admin@detectid.co.uk to discuss if you need a fresh grant for a new captain (e.g. founder stepped down two months in).
• Admin slots survive the transfer. The two existing admins stay as admins of the club, keep their perks.

Anti-abuse rules in plain English

We’ve hardened the perk system against the obvious abuse patterns. Every rule below is enforced at the database level (not just in the app), so there’s no race condition or edit-the-URL workaround.

One admin/owner grant per user, ever (active)

If you’re admin of two clubs simultaneously, you get 12 months of Premium — not 24. The grant attaches to the person, not the role. If you lose your admin role in club A but you’re still admin in club B, the grant continues. When all your admin/owner roles end, the grant is revoked.

Practical effect: nominating someone who’s already an admin elsewhere will be refused with the message “This user already has an active admin/owner perk from another club. One at a time.”

One lifetime member grant per user

Joining ten clubs equals one month of free Basic, not ten. The first verified club a user joins triggers their single one-shot member grant. Subsequent joins still count — they’re a member of those clubs, they can tag finds there, they appear in those rosters — but no fresh perk lands.

Three active perks per club, hard cap

A database trigger refuses a fourth admin/owner grant per club. So a captain can’t churn through admins, giving a string of friends 12-month perks. To open a slot, an existing admin must be removed first.

Captains cannot self-nominate as admin

The owner perk and the admin perk are separate slots in the deal. Trying to nominate yourself returns “You’re already the owner — owners can’t also be admins.”

Clubs must be verified before any perk fires

Anyone can register a placeholder club at /clubs/new. Without a verified badge, the manage page’s perk panel shows a “Email admin to verify” placeholder rather than the Claim button. Member joins on unverified clubs are recorded but don’t trigger the 1-month grant.

Demoted admins lose the perk

Removing an admin from the manage page revokes their 12-month grant at the moment of removal. They keep what they’ve already used, but the remainder of the 12 months ends.

Why: without this rule, a captain could rotate admins every 30 days and effectively hand out months of free Premium far beyond the 3 active per-club cap. With the rule, the captain has to genuinely commit to their admin choices.

Edge cases & FAQ

What if I already pay for Premium and get a perk?

Nothing weird happens. Your paid subscription continues to bill on its own schedule. The perk simply extends your Premium horizon — we take the max of (paid expiry, perk expiry) when deciding what to show. When the perk expires, your paid subscription is still running.

If you want to pause your paid billing while the perk runs, head to /settings/profile and cancel — Stripe will keep your Premium through the billing period you’ve already paid for, and after that the perk takes over.

What if I’m already a free-trial Basic and get a member perk?

The perk extends your Basic horizon. No double-counting.

What happens when the 12 months runs out?

Your account reverts to whatever tier it was on under your normal billing (Free if you weren’t paying, Basic if you were on Basic, etc.). You don’t lose your finds, your collection, or your edits — only the Premium-only features stop working (auction prices disappear, the OS overlay locks, exports gate behind Premium-only again).

What if my admin is later removed?

Their grant is revoked. They keep the time already used; the rest of the 12 months ends. Their data, collection, and tagged finds are untouched.

Can I be admin of two clubs?

Yes, but only one of them generates a perk. The first nomination wins. The second club’s nomination is refused with a clear message, but you can still serve as admin in name — you just don’t get a second 12-month grant.

Can I be owner of one club and admin of another?

Yes, but again only one perk. If you took the owner perk first, you can’t also be granted the admin perk elsewhere.

What if I leave the club?

Members who leave keep any perk that has already been issued — the 1-month grant doesn’t reverse. We’re not in the business of clawing back a teaser.

Owners and admins who voluntarily step back from their role lose the grant the same way they would if the captain removed them.

What if my club isn’t FID or NCMD-affiliated?

We still verify a lot of independent clubs. Verification is judgement-based, not paperwork-based — show us regular meets, a recognisable identity, and an active membership and we’ll verify.

Can a public find be tagged to a club other people are in?

The tag selector only shows clubs you’re a member of. You can’t tag a find to a club you don’t belong to.

What gets shown on my public profile if I’m a club owner?

A small ★ Captain badge alongside the club name and a link to the club page. Admins get an Adminbadge with the same link. Members appear in the club roster but get no pill on their personal profile (so you don’t accidentally signal “I joined this club six months ago” on every find you publish).

Can I delete a club?

Yes, from the manage page (bottom of the page — guarded by a confirmation). Deletion cascades: every find currently tagged to the club gets its club_idset to NULL (no data loss); every membership is removed; every active admin/owner grant is revoked. The owner’s and admins’ existing Premium time is left intact — it’s not clawed back.

What about the member grant for a club that gets deleted later?

Members who joined the club before deletion keep their 1-month Basic time. The lifetime cap still applies to them — they can’t claim it again from another club later.

Roadmap

Phase 2 — admin dashboard (in build)

Visible to the captain and the two admins. ETA two weeks from Phase 1 launch.

• Member roster. Every member, last active, total finds tagged to the club, total finds total. Sortable, filterable. CSV export.
• Aggregate stats. Finds this month, by period, by ruler. The same period bar chart that appears on individual collection insights pages, applied to the entire club roster at once.
• Privacy-blurred heatmap.Where the club’s finds are coming from. Admin-precise for admins, 1 km blurred for members, hidden for non-members. Honours each individual find’s privacy precision setting.
• Treasure-Act watchlist.Any club find the engine flags under the 1996 Act surfaces here so the admins can chase the PAS recording. One-click “mark as reported” status.
• Productivity by site. When multiple finds share a named permission, the dashboard shows aggregate finds per site, per month — useful for clubs running rotated permissions.
• Club newsletter (opt-in). Weekly auto-digest emailed to members: top finds this week, total finds YTD, period spread, a captain note slot (free-text 200 chars). One-click publish from the admin dashboard.

Phase 3 — full club product (later)

• Members-only feeds.For clubs that don’t want their best fields advertised publicly. A separate feed at /clubs/[slug]/feed visible only to members.
• Club-branded sharing.Finds shared with the club get the club’s colours, an optional logo, and an explicit “Found at a [Club] meet” subtitle.
• Custom club branding. Logo on member profiles, club colour on the find pin on the map, optional banner on shared finds.
• Cross-club leaderboards (opt-in).Which club’s pulled the most medieval hammered silver this quarter, etc. Healthy rivalry.
• Club rallies. Already half-built in our rallies module — Phase 3 deep-links it so a club can run a rally with one click and have all attendance auto-tagged to the club.
• Club Pro tier (under exploration).A paid tier on top of per-detectorist subscriptions, for clubs that want things like a dedicated subdomain, custom branding on every surface, an export-to-museum pipeline, or bulk-identification credits across the entire roster. We’d only build this if enough verified clubs say they’d pay for it.

Questions for clubs we’re onboarding

If you’re a captain considering signing up, the answers we most want from you (during or after the verification email):

1. As an admin, what’s the ONE report you’d check monthly? Member finds list, Treasure-Act flags, geographic heatmap, period/ruler breakdown, auction valuations across members — or something else?
2. As a member, what’s the ONE thing that would make you upload finds to DetectID vs Facebook, vs nothing?
3. Should member finds in your club default to visible-to-other-members, or private, or member-choice per find?
4. Would you use a one-click “club rally” mode (one-day event, leaderboard, auto-tag everything to the club)?
5. Would your club pay for a Pro tier — anything from £15 to £100/month — and if so what would justify it?
6. What’s missing or painful in how your club currently shares finds (Facebook group, email list, in-person)?

Getting in touch

Verification requests, feature requests, deployment questions, or just a hello — admin@detectid.co.uk. Phase 2 priorities will be set by what real captains and committees ask us for, so the more conversation the better.