Membership

Plugin Installation and Use Instructions

Building a Membership Site

The WPMU DEV Membership plugin makes it very easy to create and manage a membership site for both free and paid subscribers. Whilst the plugin handles a lot of the work, you will need to spend some time thinking through the structure of your site and how you want to set-up and categorise your content before installing and activating the Membership plugin. The purpose of these instructions are to guide you through some of the important (or even just desirable) steps, and get you up and running (and making money) as quickly and painlessly as possible.

What is a membership site

A membership site can take many guises, from Gigaom Pro which protects long articles and research, through to Izzy videowhich protects individual videos. In all cases though, a membership site contains a minimum of two levels of content:

1. Free (or teaser) content, which is accessible to everyone and is used to entice potential new members into subscribing (and also help with SEO)
2. Members only content, which is only accessible to those who have an active (paid or free) subscription to the site.

These instructions guide you through using standard WordPress categories to mark posts / content as being accessible to either free users or members only. They then go into some of the more advanced features that allow you to protect individual uploads and distinct sections of a post's content.

Installation

NOTE: If you have the Lite version of Membership installed, please deactivate and uninstall that version before installing the premium version. The settings are stored in the database so you won't lose setting information.

To install:

1. Download the plugin file
2. Unzip the file into a folder on your hard drive
3. Upload /membership/ folder to /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your site

• The path to the main plugin file is wp-content/plugins/membership/membershippremium.php

To activate it on a blog by blog basis: 1.  Log into the blog dashboard that you want to set up membership on. 2.  Go to Plugins > Installed 3.  Click on Activate under Membership system  - core plugin Network Activation (activates on all blogs in the install)

• Visit Network Admin -> Plugins and Network Activate it there.

Important note regarding default 'admin' account:

For security, the membership plugin is set up to provide it's membership options only to the default admin account in WordPress on activation.  For many reasons, you may be using an account other than 'admin'.  To use an alternate name just log in via FTP and look for the following file: membership/membershipincludes/includes/membership-config.php You'll want to edit the file so that line 23 contains your admin username. Save the file with your changes and you should be good to go.

Note regarding Admins and Super Admins

Admin and Super Admin users who have privileges to edit Membership settings see the site as it is, without any restrictions applied. Content will not be hidden from them and shortcodes will appear un-rendered. In order to properly test membership levels, it's best to use another browser and log into the site as a user with the membership level being tested.

Getting Started

Enabling your Membership plugin

By default, the membership plugin is disabled when first installed and when you go your Membership dashboard you will see it says Disabled. You need to leave this as disabled until you have at least:

1. Set up your categories
2. Created and activated a basic level to use for strangers
3. Assigned the stranger level in Membership > Options panel

Otherwise, if you are running a live site and enabled the plugin in your Membership dashboard all content will be automatically protected until you have set up the stranger level.

Activating Add-ons in Membership

Membership includes a wide array of add-ons that enhance its basic functionality, including payment gateways, invite codes and extra sets of rules. You can activate or deactivate them at Membership > Add-ons.   The available Add-ons are as follows:  

• Capital P Rule - Disables the WordPress enforced capitalisation.
• Contact Form 7 shortcode - Enables compatibility with the Contact Form 7 shortcode.
• Quick start Quide - Show the quickstart page and dashboard widget.
• Default Admin Rules - Main admin side rules.
• Default BuddyPress Rules - Main BuddyPress rules to allow for restricting/allowing access to BuddyPress pages.
• Handy Subscription shortcodes - Some extra membership shortcodes for the frontend.
• Authorize.net gateway - The Payment gateway for Authorize.net.
• Free subscriptions gateway - The gateway for Free subscriptions. This is not necessary when using the PayPal Express with Single Payments gateay.
• PayPal Express Gateway - The standard PayPal Express Gateway plugin, which creates an actual subscription in PayPal according to a member's Subscription Plan.
• PayPal Single Payments Gateway - A single payments gateay for PayPal that handles subscriptions internally without creating a subscription in PayPal. Using this gateway won't require the Free subscriptions gateway for free subscriptions. It handles them itself automatically.
• 2Checkout payment plugin - The Payment gateway for 2Checkout.
• Gravity Forms Shortcode - Enables compatibility with shortcodes provided by Gravity Forms.
• Integrated WP Roles - Allows members to be assigned different roles based on their levels.
• Default MarketPress Rules - Main MarketPress rules to all for hiding/displaying MarketPress plugin pages.
• Membership Widget - Provides a number of Membership widgets that allow you to display text widgets depending on a user's Access Level and/or Subscription Plan.
• Dashboard News Stream - Members newstream dashboard widget.
• Membership Verify and Repair - Checks and repairs the membership plugin's tables.
• Simple Invites Codes - Force invite codes for membership signups.
• Supporter Integration - Experimental Supporter plugin integration. This also supports a single, Pro level for Pro Sites.
• WPAudio shortcode - Enables compatibility with the shortcode used by the WPAudio plugin.

To use any of the included payment gateways, you'll need to activate them from this section, at which point you'll then see those gateways in your list at Membership > Payment Gateways.

Setting up your categories

Post content is protected using WordPress categories. This is the simplest method of marking specific posts as being free or members only. It is also a lot less tedious than controlling the access to individual posts, as it makes the bulk protection of whole groups of content a less tiresome proposition. You set up your categories as follows: 1.  Go to Posts > Categories 2.  Add your new categories - In this example, we've created 3 categories - Free, Premium and VIP.

• Free category - to mark content on the site tto use as teasers to draw members in.
• Premium category - used to mark content that is solely for members consumption.
• VIP category - that may used later to mark extra special content to share with a select few of members.

Strangers and Members

The membership plugin separates your sites visitors into two groups:

1. A Member is someone who is registered on your site and has an active subscription or has been assigned an access level by an administrator.
2. A Stranger is a user or visitor who is either not registered on your site, or is a registered user that doesn’t have an active subscription or been assigned an access level.

The default setting for the membership plugin is for strangers to have no access to content on your site. Whilst this is desirable for some membership sites, the majority will want a visitor to be able to see some teaser or free content in order to entice them to sign up. You can set the membership plugin to automatically assign a limited level to a user it identifies as a stranger for the duration of their visit. In order to do this you should complete the following two steps: 1.  Create a basic level to use for strangers such as Free Users via the Membership > Access Levels panel. 

• That level should restrict access to only the free content that you want to be visible.
• Activate this new membership level by clicking the Activate link under the levels name in the Access Level list.

2.  Set the strangers level in the Membership > Optionspanel.

• Set this to be the level you have just created.
• Now all visitors (and search engines) who are not members will have their access level controlled by this level.

Creating the required pages

We need to add two new pages to our site in order to make the most of the membership plugin. These are: 1.  Account pageThis is the page a user will be redirected to when they want to view their account or make a payment on their account.

• It can contain any content you want but must contain the [accountform] shortcode in some location.
• If you would like your users to be able to see their subscription details and upgrade / renew them then also add the shortcode [renewform] on this or a linked page.

2.  Registration page This page should contain some information about why a visitor should register on your fantastic membership site.

• This is your primary sales page and so you should make sure you get your content correct here.
• The only requirement, from the membership systems point of view, is that the page *must* have the following shortcode somewhere on it  [subscriptionform]
• This shortcode is replaced with the signup form by the membership plugin when the page is viewed by a user.

3.  Protected content page The content of this page is displayed if a user tries to access a page or other content that they aren’t allowed to.

• As well as telling the user why they are seeing that page instead of their desired content, you should also use the page to “up-sell” a membership

  Please note:

• If you don’t want to offer paid subscriptions on your site then you don’t need to create a registration page.
• Instead you can use the default WordPress signup page to register new users.
• In this situation you will need to set User Registration setting in the Membership > Options panel with the subscription that you wish new users to be assigned.

Creating shortcodes

Shortcodes can be used to wrap content in posts and pages that you only want certain membership levels to view. You can create as many or as few shortcodes as you want in the Membership > Options panel.  Place each shortcode on a new line. Removing existing shortcodes may mean that content wrapped in the , now, non-existent shortcodes will be visible to users that shouldn’t see it. Shortcode visibility default After you have created your shortcodes, you can decide whether the content they surround should be visible by default. Setting this to Yes means that all shortcode surrounded content will be visible to all user, except those on levels where the shortcode has been explicitly protected. For normal usage, the recommended setting for this option is No.  This protects all shortcode surrounded content will be protected unless you explicitly allow a membership level to see it. No Access Message The No access message is the content that replaces shortcode surrounded content if the user doesn’t have the required permissions to view it. If you do not want a user to know that there is content that they can’t see, then you should leave this blank, otherwise it is a good idea to set it to a hyperlink pointing to your registration page.

How to use a shortcode to protect content

Content in a post or page can be protected by simply wrapping it with the shortcodes tags. This content, which could be html, video embeds, links or pretty much anything really, is only visible to users who have permissions to see that shortcode content.

Protecting the more tag

The more tag can be used to protect the main body of posts on your site, whilst providing some teaser content for non-members (and search engines). You can protect any content located after the more tag by default by using the more tag settings on the Membership > Options panel. The No access message can include html and be set to direct users to your registration page, or left blank if you don’t want non-members to know that there is hidden content. The content located after the more tag can be “re-enabled” on a level by level basis (or disabled, should you allow more tag content to be visible by default).

Protecting downloads

Media files and other content which can be uploaded to WordPress using the media upload area can be protected by the membership plugin. When a file is uploaded or edited, it can be assigned to a “download group”. These groups can then be protected by the membership plugin on a level by level basis. Before being used though, there are some initial steps that need to be completed in the Membership > Options panel. Creating Download Groups Download groups are created in much the same way as shortcodes are. Each groups name should be placed on a new line. Removing already used download groups may “unprotect” some files that have been assigned to that level. The main method of protecting uploaded media and files is to disguise the actual files location. This is done by setting the Masked download url in the Membership > Options panel. Once this is set, any links to your content will automatically be changed to point to the new download url. This then enables the membership plugin to check the access for each piece of media prior to delivering it. It is important to keep the actual location of your files a secret, as if a user is able to find the unmasked url details, then the membership plugin will not be able to check for the relevant access permissions before your web-server delivers the file to the user. Using Protected downloads To create a protected download all you need to do is: 1.  Upload your file via Media > Add New 2.  Once uploaded choose the Protected Content group, copy the FILe URL and click Save all changes

• Alternatively, you can change any existing uploaded files to Protected downloads by going to Media > Library clicking Edit link, selected the Protected Content group and clicking Save all changes

3.  Now write your post or page and include your file URL 4.  Once published users who don't have the required membership to download the file will see a page that says No Access when they try to download the file.

• The no access image is located in membershipincludes/images/noaccess

Creating membership levels

A membership level controls access to specific content by a member. A member can belong to multiple membership levels either individually, or as part of a subscription. When a user belongs to more than one level then their access rights are a culmination of all of their assigned levels. Unless you are careful, this can cause conflicts and access to content you may not have intended them to have. Membership levels are created on the Membership > Access Levels panel. You create and activate new access levels as follows: 1.  Go to Membership > Access Levels panel 2.  Click on Add New With your new Ping setup, you'll now be able to utilize that Ping when creating and editing Subscription Plans and Access Levels.