Level of difficulty: easy, really easy
What you’ll need:
- Gravity Forms (Developer License)
- Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On
- Justin Tadlock’s Members Plugin
- About 15 minutes
Introduction
WordPress already has quite a lot of the functionality you need to create a basic membership site. The trouble is, you quickly realise that some parts of the functionality can be improved. The nice thing about WordPress though is that you can nearly always find a WordPress plugin that will help you as your site grows.
In this tutorial, we’ll be using Gravity Forms and Justin Tadlock’s Members plugin to turn WordPress into a basic membership site and require visitors to register to be able to see protect posts and pages. Non-members will only see the titles of the posts.
Once you’ve got the plugins installed, the configuration only takes a few simple steps.
Step 1: Set up the registration form in Gravity Forms
Step 2: Configure the form to create user accounts
Step 3: Configure some members-only content
Step 4: Add a login box to a sidebar
Benefits of a membership plugin
Using a dedicated membership plugin on your WordPress website can help you keep things organized and deliver a good user experience to customers. You can use it to:
- Restrict user access to content and downloads
- Charge for memberships
- Generate recurring revenue
The only problem is that a dedicated membership plugin has lots of features that you won’t need if you’re looking to build a simple Gravity Forms membership site.
So, while you could certainly use a dedicated membership plugin, there’s a simpler way when you need a simpler website. Gravity Forms and Members do all these things well.
How to set up a basic WordPress membership site using Gravity Forms
To set up a basic Gravity Forms membership site, you’ll need to first install the Gravity Forms plugin and Justin Tadlock’s Members plugin. Once you’ve installed and activated both plugins, you can add new members to your site or to your CRM on form submission. One way to do this is by using an API like Zapier.
This way, whenever someone submits a form on your website, they’ll automatically be added to your Gravity Forms membership site and CRM.
Step 1: Setting up the registration form
WordPress, out of the box, is limited to a rather sparse registration form with just username and password fields in the middle of a virtually blank page. It’s all very zen but not much use if we need to collect more information about the users, sign them up to a mailing list or require that they accept terms and conditions. By using Gravity Forms to create the registration form we get the features you might expect for a membership site; we can put the registration form on any page or widget area, include any additional fields, make sure that users get signed up to an email list, require email verification and keep the account on hold until the administrator’s approval.
To create our basic registration form we need to create a new Gravity Form following the directions here. You’ll end up with a form that looks something like this:
Now we’ve got the form set up we need to tell Gravity Forms that this form will be used for new user registrations.
Step 2: Configure the form to create user accounts
Once you’ve installed the User Registration Add-On you’ll need to set up a simple user registration feed. This will map each field on the registration form to a field in the WordPress user settings and will make sure that Gravity Forms creates the user account with the right information.
Don’t worry about the User Meta and Additional Options sections for the moment – you can add those options later if you like.
The registration form now knows it has to check the username field to make sure it’s not already taken. If there’s another account with that username then form will fail the validation and ask the user to choose a different username. This helps you deliver a good user experience.
Now we have a Gravity Form configured to create user accounts for our members we need to protect some content.
Step 3: Protecting content
WordPress has a couple of options for protecting content but neither are particularly helpful for a membership site. The first requires the post author to assign a password to each post and the second requires the user to be an editor of the blog. We’ll need to make sure that all registered users can see our protected content so we’ll need finer control over who can see what.
There are lots of plugins that will do this for you to varying levels of complexity but our basic membership site just needs a simple plugin that will allow us to hide certain content from non-members. Justin Tadlock’s Members plugin has been around for a long time and continues to be developed and supported and it gives us plenty of control.
Once you’ve installed and activated the Members plugin you’ll find this box on the edit page below the content of each post and page:
The only thing we need to configure here is the role which will have access. Select the “subscriber” role for each of the posts and pages you’d like to protect. This will ensure that all registered users will have access to content and anonymous users will see something like this for protected posts and pages:
Step 4: Add a login form
The standard login form on WordPress is like the registration form. It works perfectly but it doesn’t give us any control over what the login page looks like. If we want to integrate the login form into one or all of the pages we’ll need to use a plugin. The Members plugin, in addition to controlling access, also has a login widget that you can activate in the settings and then add to a sidebar. By default it will look like this:
And once the user has logged it, it’ll look like this:
That’s all there is to it – your WordPress site is now set up to provide protected content for members only.
Next Steps
As your membership site grows you’ll find you want to refine the set up further.
Remove the admin bar
One of the first things you’ll probably want to do is hide the admin bar that appears at the top for logged in users. Again, lots of plugins will do this for you for instance Admin Bar Disabler and Admin bar.
Auto-login after register
If you’d like to save your newly registered members the additional step of having to log in immediately after registering there’s a little snippet of code here that you can add to your theme’s functions.php file that do this for you. New members will be automatically logged in so you can send them directly to your member content.
Charge for access
You can easily add a paywall to your membership site by using the Gravity Forms PayPal Add-On to require payment before the account is created or a WooCommerce checkout using Stripe. Both one-off payments and recurring subscriptions with automatic account cancellations are supported.
Add more membership levels
The Members looks very simple on the surface but it’s actually a very flexible and deceptively powerful plugin. With a bit of planning and care it can be used to create multiple membership levels which you can then assign to users, post and pages.
Protect downloads
If you have a special download like a pdf report or a product that only your members should have access to then that link needs to be protected to reduce the risk of unauthorised sharing. The PluginBuddy S3 URLs plugin will generate a link to your download that expires automatically after a specified number of seconds.
Configure admin approval for new accounts
By activating the “user activation” option in the current version of the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On (1.5 beta1.2) the user will receive a mail with an activation link which will create the account immediately. If you’d like to make sure that only the administrator can approve the account you’ll need to add the following bit of code to the functions.php file in the current theme.
/**
* Configure Admin Approval for New Accounts
* https://gravitywiz.com/
*/
remove_filter( 'wpmu_signup_user_notification_email', array( 'GFUserSignups', 'modify_signup_user_notification_message' ) );
add_filter( 'wpmu_signup_user_notification_email', 'my_modify_signup_user_notification_message' );
function my_modify_signup_user_notification_message() {
return false;
}
add_action( 'gform_user_registered', 'my_new_user_notification', 10, 4 );
function my_new_user_notification( $user_id, $config, $lead, $password ) {
$user = new WP_User( $user_id );
$user_login = stripslashes( $user->user_login );
$user_email = stripslashes( $user->user_email );
$blogname = wp_specialchars_decode( get_option( 'blogname' ), ENT_QUOTES );
$message = "Thanks for signing up. Your account has been approved and you can now log in.\r\n";
$message .= sprintf( __( 'Username: %s' ), $user_login ) . "\r\n";
$message .= "Password: the one you entered in the registration form\r\n";
$message .= wp_login_url() . "\r\n";
wp_mail( $user_email, sprintf( __( '[%s] Your account has been been approved' ), $blogname ), $message );
}
Steve Henty is a developer at rocketgenius.
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Hello can you tell me if the ” PluginBuddy S3 URL plugin ” still works as when i look on wordpress it says it is not updated for 2 years, hope it does Also thanks for great work with the site, had no idea it was so GF was so powerful.
Hey Andrew, I would expect that it does. Amazon hasn’t changed their S3 API much in the past couple of years.
Does this process have any way to email members whos membership is about to expire? If not, do you know of one that can be added? I am in desperate need of something that will send a few email reminders to members before there membership expires. Then, if it does, their membership status will change.
Many thanks, Houston
So when I want to approve the registered user, how would I go about it? What happens when I approve? Do they get an email?
Hi Julio, the User Registration’s “Pending Activations” feature allows you to manually approve each user before they are registered on your site. They will receive the default New User signup notification that is sent from WordPress.
Wow. OK, I see now. If I may ask a bit more.
The approved user received two notices. 1. Can we make this just one notice? 2. Can we customize either of these messages?
Thanks so much!!! This is such a great solution!
Hi,
Great tutorial, thanks.
However, do you have something to work with Wishlist Member plugin? i.e, registering user and assigning him to a specific membership level
Regards
Hey Asaf, Gravity Member bridges that gap. You can find it here: http://ristrettoapps.com
Is there any way to get this same functionality using the buddpress pluggin?
The Gravity Forms User Registration Add-on integrates with BuddyPress so you can probably get most of the way there with this same method. Let me know specific things that aren’t working with this method + BuddyPress and I’ll see if there is a simple workaround.
I am trying to configure a registration page using conditional login and enables users to login using my custom page and save the information in buddypress so that I can use the buddypress messaging and notification system.
Thank you
Hi, great tutorial. Is there a way to redirect a user to a custom page instead of just showing the custom error message? What is want is to have a protected page that checks the role of the user and if the user is not registered then it automatically gets redirected to custom registration page. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Hi Rohnn, it looks like if you use the WordPress Access Control plugin, you can setup per page redirect rules based on access.
Hi Dan, Great Tutorial.
Anyway to adopt this into capturing info from the visitor without them creating a user profile?
I would like to have a form popup over one page, but only require them to give name, email, phone etc. to see the content. A 24 hour cookie would be placed so that they can see the content for 1 day before resubmitting info.
Thanks
Hi Samuel, this is certainly possible but would require some custom work to complete. I’d recommend reaching out to Gravity Forms for any recommended developers.
Great tutorial and very similar to something i’m currently doing.
Is it possible to map a field to the user role, allowing the person submitting the form to choose the ‘User Role’ as opposed to just setting one in the feed settings?
Hi Jack, simplest way will probably be to:
$entryarray$user_idThanks David, I’ll give it a try and see how I get on!
Hi David, Great post – thank you :) Do you know which plugin we should use to be able to have the person also create a profile page the public can see? We use Gravity Forms (developer). Thank you
Hi Lana… good question. I don’t have a recommendation for this now, but I will keep an eye out and update the post if I find a good one. If you find one before me, please do come back and share. :)
Hi, thanks for writing this up. I was wondering if you could create a paywall for specific posts for a membership site if a user is alread y a member.
The idea is to permit access to posts based on a PayPal purchase. The purchase is valid for a year and should terminate after that.
/Thomas
Hi David, Is there a way to assign users a new role depending on a form submitted through gravity forms?
I’ve created a series of forms and I would like to assign the user a new role each time they submit a form. It is mandatory to have conditional logic working – that is, depending on their form answers I would add them to a different role.
Possible? If so, is there a plugin for this?
Thank you!!! Ben
If this is for a user creation feed, you can create multiple feeds each assigning the user to a different role. Using the “Registration Condition” option on each feed, you can determine which feed (and therefore which role) is used for that user when the form is submitted.
This won’t work on a user update feed because there is a limitation of one update feed per form.
“there is a limitation of one update feed per form”
Whyyyyy? Is there any way around this that you can think of? Being able to conditionally update different BP profile fields from the same form would allow me to manage everything through one form rather than 6 slightly varying forms.
Thanks from a happy customer :)
The tricky part is that the update feed works two ways. It populates the data when the form is loaded and updates the data when the form is submitted. If you have multiple feeds, GF doesn’t know which feed to use when the form loads (only when the form submits). This can result in some unusually and unexpected behavior.
Thanks David!
Works perfectly :-)
BTW – I found a very nice redirect solution. It’s a plugin called ‘Peter’s Login Redirect’ and it redirects users to different locations after logging in.
Have a great day David! Cheers, Gil
Hi Steve and David,
Great post! Thank you!
I want to give this a try as I have been using another solution (that will remain nameless!) and it is … problematic!
I have a few questions that I hope you can answer.
1) Will my excerpts still show in the post archives? I don’t want to lose excerpts.
2) One of the problems I had with the unnamed solution was that comments would still show up when someone clicked on a protected post. I’d get the “you need to log in” bit and it would hide the actual post, but the comments were all visible. I was able to deal with that using some code in functions.php. Will comments show up with Justin’s solution?
OR
3) Better yet, it would be nice if users who do not have permission to see a post are redirected to an options page that tells them this is protected content and here are the options for registration. S2 does this nicely (and no … S2 is not the unnamed solution mentioned above) I had a peek at the screen shots for Justin Tadlock’s Members Plugin and saw where I can modify the text but no redirect options. Do you think there would be a way to do that?
That’s it!
Again, thanks for sharing this solution with us!
Cheers,
Gil
Hi again!
I did a quick test and can confirm that comments are indeed hidden (yay!) but that excerpts do not show up. You get “Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.”
Hmmm will noodle with this! Just thought I would update and save you some typing!
Cheers,
Gil
Hi Gil, here is some code that updates the post content restriction message to the post excerpt (if it exists) instead: http://pastie.org/7745960
Just drop it in your theme’s functions.php file and it should work. :)
Hi David,
Thanks! That link does not work for me? Cheers, Gil
Oh you updated it! Thanks. Will give it a go and let you know!
Cheers, Gil
Hi David,
This is coming along very nicely! Can you recommend a plugin that will redirect a user (when the log in) to a profile page other than the standard profile.php page?
Thanks and cheers, Gil
Hi David,
I tried your code above and it works. BUT. It shows the excerpt in the archives, but when you click on the post, it still shows the excerpt rather than the You need to log in to see this message.
Have a peek here: http://www.synaptici.com/category/members-only/
Hey Gil, try this updated snippet: http://pastie.org/7752475 It does a check to see if you’re on a single page and if so returns the original error message.
Hello David,
Great post, I wish I found it earlier would have saved me lots of hours of figuring things out! :)
Actually, there is still something that I can’t figure out. I want when registering/editing profile for a user to be able to upload a logo file.
I would also need an ability to be able to add/edit/delete that logo file via native WP user profile interface & have the logo saved to Media Library.
I’ve tried lots of different things, but that didn’t work and GF support forum is very slow.
I wandered if you might know how to achieve this.
Many thanks, Dasha
Hi Dasha, if you’re using the Gravity Forms User Registration add-on, you can map a GF field (such as the upload field) to a user’s meta. This will store the image URL in the user meta; however, it will not store the image in the media library. With GF User Registration 1.5, it also provides the ability for you to create forms that will “update” the user meta so they could upload a new image.
the 2nd “Admin Bar” plugin recommended in this post has been Deprecated / dead plugin.
thanks very much for this post, exactly the kind of functionality i’ve been hunting for! thank you thank you
Glad to hear it! :)
Thanks. I sent them a request. Have you had good reports about Extended? Do you know any websites that use their plugin?
I have not used it myself or heard much about it besides that it exists. If you end up using it, please do share your experience. :)
Hello, You have some pretty good information on your website. Are you working on PDF capabilities with GF?
Hi Dan, I am not; however, you might consider this plugin on the WordPress.org repository: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gravity-forms-pdf-extended/