There are several full-featured plugins out there that can turn your WordPress website into a full-blown membership site.
Wishlist Member, Amember, and Cart66 are just a few that immediately come to mind.
But these plugins come at a cost, and offer features and functionality that most small business owners simply don’t need and will never use. Each of these membership plugins also have a considerable learning curve associated with them, not to mention the upfront cost, and usually, on-going charges for support.
But what if you run a small business and simply want to give clients access to a protected area of your website where they can access “customers only” documents or other media?
Today I’d like to share with you how you can do just that with a few free WordPress plugins.
Here Are The Plugins You’ll Need:
- Members
- Custom Registration Link
- Peter’s Login Redirect
- Login Logo
Once you’ve installed and activated the plugins I listed above, you’ll want to go to the settings for each and make a few changes. But first, go to Settings >> General >> and make sure you check the box in the “membership” line next to “Anyone can register”.
Now on to setting up the plugins.
Members – This is a user, role, and content management plugin for controlling permissions and access. After enabling the plugin in the settings, you can also create a custom error message for users that don’t have permission to view the protected pages/content. Obviously in this custom message you should include a link where they could navigate to learn more about how/why to join.
Once enabled, this plugin creates an input panel with checkboxes and you need to check those boxes on posts/pages you wish to protect like so:
Custom Registration Link – This plugin lets you modify the registration link of your WordPress website. This will result in greatly reduced spam registrations. The default WP registration link is “www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php?action=register” and is heavily targeted by spam-bots. This plugin will change this link to another one and make the old one invalid.
Once you’ve activated this plugin, go to the general options and put in a new url for your registration page.
Peter’s Login Redirect – This plugin let’s you redirect subscribers to a particular page/post after they log in. Pretty self-explanatory here but you want to make sure you are sending subscribers to a central page to act as sort of their membership “hub” allowing them to them jump off to other protected content.
Login Logo – This plugin allows you to use your own logo on the WordPress login page. Here’s an example:
This keeps your customers from getting confused, especially if they aren’t exactly tech savvy. Many people don’t know what WordPress is, so this helps out in that regard. They’ll see your logo on the registration and login pages and know they are in the right place.
That’s pretty much it. When you want to give a customer access to your Member’s Only page, just send them the link to your registration page.
You may also want to put a link to your Members/Customers Only page somewhere in your website navigation or in the footer.
I should also note that you could accomplish the same thing I have with a number of other plugin combinations. The above combination just happens to be the mix I am using for one particular project, and it has not failed me yet.
Good luck!
Writer.