WeChat public account development tutorial Part 2 - Types of WeChat public accounts (normal and conference)_PHP tutorial

Personal public account and corporate public account

I remember that two months ago, when I asked in the WeChat official development group what was the difference between a personal public account and a corporate public account, I was laughed at. No one was willing to tell me. Maybe this question was too much. It's easy. I think there must be many friends who were confused about this when they first came into contact with it. In fact, when registering a WeChat public account, there is no distinction between personal accounts and corporate accounts. The registration information they need to fill in is the same. This difference is only the difference in usage after the account application is successful. However, there is indeed a type to choose from when registering a public account, but it is not a personal account or a business account. So what types are there to choose from? This is exactly what I want to talk about today, please continue reading.

Two account types you can choose when registering

The last step in registering a WeChat public account is to fill in the "Official Account Information". The last option is to select "Type", which has two values ​​to choose from: "General Public Account Type" and "Public Meeting Account". When we select "Public Meeting Account", an eye-catching red text will appear below "Reminder: The meeting account is a public account with a certain time limit, and you will not be able to log in and use it after it expires.", as shown in the figure below.

So which type should you choose when registering? This requires us to have a certain understanding of the two types before we can make a judgment. The following will mainly explain the differences between public meeting accounts and ordinary public accounts.

The difference between public accounts and ordinary accounts

In the "Settings" column of the registered guild meeting account, you can see the "Conference Number Settings" item, as shown in the figure below:

In fact, the difference between conference accounts and ordinary accounts can be fully reflected in the "Conference Account Settings". The differences between them are as follows:

1) Valid time

Ordinary accounts are valid forever after they are created, while conference accounts are only valid for one month, and the account will expire after one month. When logging in to the WeChat public platform after the account expires, it will prompt "The public meeting account has expired and can no longer be logged in and used", as shown in the figure below:

When users who have followed the conference account continue to use it after the account expires, they will be prompted "The public account has expired and cannot send messages." However, if it is a conference account with menu permissions, you can still obtain information through the menu. The response of the menu after expiration is not disabled, as shown in the figure below:

As you can see from the picture above, after the conference account expires, you can no longer obtain messages through text, but you can continue to use it by clicking on the menu. The graphic message "Summit Overview" in the picture is returned after clicking on the menu.

2) Follow permissions

Anyone with a normal account can follow without permission restrictions. Conference accounts can be set to follow permissions, which are divided into two types: anyone can follow and only those who need to pass verification can follow. If this setting is not set, the default is the former. If it is set to require verification before you can follow it, it is similar to the verification when adding friends on WeChat, except that the verification questions here can be set, and if the verification message you set is similar to asking the user's identity, such as " What's your real name?" You can also check "Use verification message as remark name", so that everyone who follows the conference account can be easily identified.

3) Participants are visible to each other

Followers of ordinary accounts are invisible to each other, but followers of conference accounts are visible to each other. What does this mean? In the conference account settings, if "Participants are visible to each other" is checked, then after following the conference account, you can see an additional "Participant" in the account details. Clicking on it will display all followers. You can view the WeChat ID list of the conference account, and click on a participant to view detailed information, apply to be added as a friend, etc.

This is a more powerful function of the conference account, which makes it easier for people participating in the conference to get to know each other.

The above three points are the characteristics of conference accounts and the differences from ordinary accounts. It can be seen that the conference account is based on the functions of ordinary accounts and adds three functions: account validity time limit (one month), following permissions and mutual visibility of followers.

In fact, WeChat’s current support for conference accounts is far from enough. For example, the regular attribute settings of meetings such as meeting theme, time, location, etc. are not supported, and the sign-in, interaction, voting and other links that are usually included in meetings are not reflected in any way, and periodic meetings are not taken into account. We hope that WeChat will later This version has greater support for this.