Protecting your content
This information is valid for 1.3.4, early versions have more limited options
The heart of Your Members is the content protection, this prevents people who do not have the correct account type from accessing content.
Account types vs subscriptions
Your Members introduced two new concepts into Wordpress: Users Account Type and Membership Subscription.
Account Types
When using Your Members everyone has an account type it defines what content they can and can’t see, by default we offer 4 types: Guest, Free, Trial, Member.
“Guest” is the default non logged in level, “Free” is only available if the Free Modules is active and the same for “Trial”. Member is a user defined level you can delete it if you want!
You can also add more account types for example if you offer three levels of membership you could set three account types Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Premium, Basic. The name is irrelevant it is just to remind you and your users which account type they are using. Content is associated to one or more account types, so accounts are little more the group name place holders.
Account types are not hierarchical!
Account types are place holders they have no order, therefore if you tick “Free” account to have access to certain content it does not mean “Member” will also have access unless you specify it.
Subscriptions
A Subscription is a payment plan associated to a user and an account, a user chooses a subscription and is assigned an account type appropriate for that subscription. Subscriptions and Account types have a many to one relationship, each subscription relates to just one account type and one duration but a account type can have mane subscriptions associated with it. For example:
- A subscription for $5 every month for “member” account type
- A subscription for $1000 every 10 years for “member” account type
- A subscription for $4 every two months for “member” account type
All 3 can exist at the same time on the same site, Your Members does not error check costs or duration it assumes the human in charge can count!
A subscription has no effect on content other then assigning the user an account type, a user with a 10 year subscription to account type “Members” will see the same as a user with a month subscription.
Manage Content
Your Members provides several methods of protecting content and each is described below:
- Full Post Protection
- Partial post protection with [ private ] tag
- Entire Blog Protection
Please note you cannot mix between the three methods of protecting content so you will have to choose between Full, Partial, Entire if in doubt chose Partial it offers maximum flexibility.
Full Post Protection
Full post protection is not enabled by default and is not the preferred method for maximum flexibility use Partial Content Protection
To enable wp-admin -> Your Members -> General Settings / Access Settings – Enable Full post protection.
Any Post or Page can be protected through write/manage pages in wp-admin, simple tick the account type you want to be able to see the content and save. Multiple Account types can be clicked, when using this method you cannot use Pay Per Post to allow people to access the post, this is because if the user does not have access to the post because they are the wrong membership they will have no access to the page at all, it will not appear to exist to them i.e they are presented with a 404 page not found.
If you want some access even if it is just the extract and a way to purchase the post you need to use Partial Post Protection (see below)
Full Post Protection, posts will not show up in non members user feeds and will only be available in feeds if the user is logged in or are using token feed.
Partial Content protection
Screencast – 1/2 Partial Content protection with Messages.
Sometimes you might want all users to have some limited access to a post, maybe to tease them with part of the post or to offer the post for pay per post in such scenarios we have a special [ private ] tag which can be wrapped around any content on the page, this content will then be available to any account types designated on the right hand side. You can use multiple private tags on the page, each time the content is replaced with a message of your choice, or alternatively if the post is for sale using pay per post and the user is logged in and eligible a purchase button.
Posts extracts which are partially protected are shown if user defined, if automated they are shown only if content is available to the user at that user level. To protect an entire post but make it purchasable, wrap all the posts content in a set of private tags, select the user group you wish to allow access (or leave if you simply want it to be purchasable to all) Choose a price and tick past available to buy? option. Scroll down in excerpt write a teaser this will be shown on some pages leading to the content and will be the only clue other then title to the content.
Partial content protection with Redirect – 1.3.5rc2 or higher
Screencast – 2/2 Follows from Partial with Messages.
With 1.3.5 it is possible that instead of displaying a message in places where content which is protected the page is instead redirected to a generic sales page. This allows you the flexibility of adding teasers and extracts but with the ability to centralise sign ups and sales pages. However this mode will not work with Pay per Post. To use Partial Post with redirect visit:
Your Members ->General Settings/Access Control
and indicate the URL of your sales page, leave redirect on home page.
then create a page as normally but enclose the whole post in a pair of [ private ] tags select the account types you would like access to and then add an extract. The post will now be seen from the home page and categories/archives etc but when a non logged in or a person with the wrong user level attempts to access the page they are redirected to the appropriate sales page.
Entire Blog Protection
In general settings in Your Members there is an option to disable access to guests, this will mean a Guest will be asked to redirect whenever they reach a Wordpress post or page of any sort including the front page, categories etc. Once logged in the normal partial or full protection can be assigned to separate content depending on account types. This is a very draconian method of turning your site into a complete membership site and not recommended for normal use, instead use full post protection on all pages and posts barring sales pages.
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