I was asked by a visitor how he could create an area (or even just a page) on his WordPress site that contained material meant only for customers. In particular, he wanted members who have paid a subscription to be able to download certain files. This article discusses how you can set up a section of your WordPress blog that can only be accessed by members or customers or people whom you specifically allow.
Incidentally, if you don't use WordPress and your intention is something simple like cordon off a section of your website for a fairly fixed number of people, for example, you want to set up some pages with photos that only family members can see, you can also use the alternative of password protecting a folder (ie, directory) of your website, and giving the relevant people the password to it.
The simplest and fastest way to set up an exclusive members-only section of your WordPress blog is to look for a plugin that does the job (and install it).
For those unfamiliar with where to look for such software, the WordPress site itself has a huge repository of plugins. To narrow your search, the plugins that do the tasks mentioned above can usually be found listed in the memberships, member, members-only, and members tag pages. Click the links in the previous sentence to get to the pages that list the software. You may need to try all of those tag pages to get a more complete list, since not every developer uses the same tag for his/her plugin.
Before you install any, please note the following things:
Some of the plugins that deal with membership have "premium" options. That is, the plugin may be listed as "free" and "open source", but some of the features are only available if you buy the extras. Read the description carefully when selecting if you only plan to use free versions.
If you want to have files that only your paying customers or subscribers can download, you need to find a plugin that specifically protects those files as well. Otherwise the plugin may only protect the pages containing your articles or posts in the members section.
Putting a link to a file from a protected page does not automatically protect that link. Your customer may copy your link (accidentally or otherwise) and post it somewhere else, and others will be able to download those files directly from your site. To safeguard the files from being directly downloaded by non-members, the plugin must allow access to those files only to those who are logged in as members.
There are also plugins that are integrated with a payment platform/gateway, for those planning to set up a customer area. You can of course ignore this if you already have your own way of collecting payment, or if you just want to provide a free members area.
Some of the plugins also support different membership levels (eg, free, silver, gold) with access to different things for the various tiers, giving you more flexibility should you need it.
Although I say that installing a plugin is the easiest way to add this facility, it doesn't mean that there is no work involved, especially if you want to customize the plugin (which you will undoubtedly want to do). You will need to read their documentation, and some things may require you to have a bit of technical knowledge. That said, the amount of knowlege you will need for the task is probably less than if you were to implement your own subscription/membership facility from scratch.
Copyright © 2019 Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this,
on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from https://www.thesitewizard.com/.
Do you find this article useful? You can learn of new articles and scripts that are published on thesitewizard.com by subscribing to the RSS feed. Simply point your RSS feed reader or a browser that supports RSS feeds at https://www.thesitewizard.com/thesitewizard.xml. You can read more about how to subscribe to RSS site feeds from my RSS FAQ.
This article is copyrighted. Please do not reproduce or distribute this article in whole or part, in any form.
It will appear on your page as:
How to Create a Password-Protected Area for Customers or Members in WordPress
