Getting Started Guide
This is the Latest version of the Getting Started Guide located in your Documents Folder
Your Members is a Wordpress Plugin, it goes without saying you therefore need a working copy of Wordpress to use it.
Installation
Before we begin backup your existing Wordpress site just in case of any unfortunate incidents. Once you have backed up the site, login as the sites administrator and go to:
Settings -> General
Scroll Down until you see the section marked “Membership” and tick the “Anyone can register” tickbox followed by update. If you do not do this no members will be able to register!
Installing and Activating Plugin
Unpack your Zip files the folder marked YM should be moved to your Wordpress Plugin Folder which is found in wp-content/plugins/ once the directory is in place login in to your Admin Area and click Plugins scroll down to Your Members and click Activate, after a few seconds a New Your Members Tab should appear in your admin area.
Congratulations you just installed Your Members easy wasn’t it!
Activating Your Members
Single License Users Only
Single License Users are asked to take the extra step of activating there copy of ‘Your Members’ it will just take a second.
[note to Tim add stuff here]
Initial Setup
Once Activated and your license is installed you should be presented with the Your Members welcome page, here at a glance you can see recent activity and we will also let you know of any changes you may need. Before you get going we need to do some initial set and work out what to do with your old users.
Setting up roles
Lets Start by visiting Member Roles
->Settings -> Your Member -> Member Roles
This page is divided into two, we are initially interested in the lower half of the page, as you can see this is where you define roles, by default both trial and free roles have been enabled and you will not be able to delete them except by removing the appropriate module. You will also see the Role Member this is a prepared role for you, and you can delete it. To add a new role use the add role option.
For more information see Setting Up a Members Site
Once you have added the roles you want go up to the top of the page and generate new Subscriptions (if you don’t create a subscription for a role no one can subscribe to it)
General Settings
Once you have the desired Membership roles in place its time to setup the site go to
->Settings -> Your Member -> General Settings
This is primarily about what to do with existing posts and pages as well as users, if you wish all your existing posts to be free simply tick guests, if you want to change all your posts to require users to be logged in (remember this will remove them from search engines) but not have to charge users click free.
Next Determine your default Level for users, normally this would be Free but you could always offer them one of the paid for roles on a trial basis notice you can set the duration of their initial membership after which they will be asked to choose a new subscription plan.
Before Moving to the rest of the document click Setup Data.
The General Settings that follow all relate to public facing information, but is self explanatory.
Setup Paypal
To setup your paypal information
->Settings -> Your Member -> Payment Gateways -> Paypal (edit)
If you do not plan on free membership or Pay Per Post then you can disable the free role by clicking deactivate next to Free Payment Edit button.
In Paypal settings you need to place the Primary Email address for your Paypal Account, the option to set a return URL should not be changed unless you do not wish to use Third Party Notification scripts, if you do not want to use such scripts this address can be changed to a thankyou page.
The rest is Self explanatory do be aware by default the Paypal Gateway is in sandbox mode to prevent accidental purchases to activate live mode: “Live Switch” and turn to Live Site.
Congratulations you have successfully configured your site for general use, go pat yourself on the back.
Creating a Members Site
So that was the basics but lets now get a more useful site up and running, in this example we are going to make a members site which has some content restricted to members.
Disabling Free and Trial
For this example log into Payment Gateways and disable both Free and Trial Mode, without Free mode enabled we won’t be able to use Pay Per Post features but for the is example this is not a problem.
Set Up Registration Fields
Next let’s configure what information we wish to collect from our users.
->Settings -> Your Member -> Registration Fields
The Green Box is what fields we are currently presenting the user at signup, the blue are potential fields, we can add or edit fields. Let’s add some Terms and conditions, simply drag Terms and Conditions from the blue box to the green one and click Update. Great we have Terms and Conditions enabled but it’s not very helpful unless we put some terms in, so scroll down and find term and conditions in the table below and click edit in the action column. This actually takes you to the Message options
->Settings -> Your Member -> Messages
Put in some Terms and click Save Messages, notice the box above this puts some message for people wishing to subscribe and was on the previous page as well. For information on Styling registration try the style guide.
Writing a Protected post
Let’s write our first post for our members, click Write in top admin.
Anything we wish non members not to see should be held in [ private ] [ private ] tags, so if we don’t want them to see anything then we enclose all the content in these tags. This will mean the pages content will not be available to search engines as well as non members and so should be used with caution. If you do make all the content private then on posts you can use the extract field to write a compelling short about the page to entice people in.
One of the most successful tactics is to mix posts with member restricted sections, you can use private tags as often as you like. once you have selected the content to be hidden, select from the right hand side the role you wish to be able to see private content. You must tick each role you want to have access Roles are not hierarchical and do not gain permissions from other roles.
Save and log out to see the effect, to change the message non members see for private content go to Messages and edit appropriately.
Creating Pay Per Post Access Site
So we have done Members, but what if we want to charge for each post separately? Well here is how!
Go to Roles and remove all roles that you can, set up a free Subscription for 1 year and save (Note if you have followed our previous tutorial you will need to reactivate free Payment Gateway first), then go to Payment Gateways and disable trials.
Click on the Paypal Gateway Edit button, scroll down to Subscription options, Pay per post automatically uses the one time payment type so no need to activate it but you can set the default value of your Posts here.
Write a Pay Post
Just as normal write your post complete with private tags, but instead of selecting a member role tick enable Post available to buy? to yes and set the value of the post. That’s pretty much it congratulations! Before we go over board with celebrations go the Messages screen and write a suitable message to explain to people not logged in that they first need to register for free to purchase the post. When a user is logged in they should see the Paypal purchase button allowing them to purchase the post. Once purchased it remains within their inventory even after they log out.
Mixed Sites
It is entirely possible to use both member roles and Pay per post at the same time, if Pay per post is active on a post and the user does not have the correct role they will be presented the buy option.
