WordPress Membership

Easy to use WordPress Membership plugin

Overview of the Available Content Protection Methods

WP eMember has a few types of content protection methods available to help you protect your content. Most users use the “Standard Protection” and “Section Protection” options but depending on your situation the others might come in handy too.

This page provides an overview/summary of the different ways you can protect your content. There is documentation for each of these protection options which explains how a particular method works and how you can use it.

1) Standard Protection:

Protects the main body of the content (example, post body, page body). Visitors can browse the site as usual but they won’t be able to see the content of the protected posts, pages, comments etc. You control this type of protection via the “Manage Content Protection” tab or the “eMember Protection” section below the WordPress post editor at the time of editing your post/page. Full details on how to use this method of protection can be found here.

2) Section Protection:

You can also protect a section of a post or page content. Visitors can browse the site as usual but they won’t be able to see the section that is protected unless they are logged in as a member. Section protection is applied via a shortcode (you wrap the content that you want to protect with this shortcode). Full details on how to use it can be found here.

3) Site Wide Protection:

WP eMember has a site wide protection feature. When you use this feature, nothing on your WordPress site is accessible unless the visitor logs in as a member. You can selectively exclude some of your pages (example, a landing page) so it can be accessible without having to log in.

There is also an option to do the opposite of the above. Instead of locking down the full site you can selectively lock-down some pages or a group of pages on your site. The visitor won’t be able to see any part of the locked down pages unless they log in as a member. Full details of this option can found here.

4) Custom Content Protection:

This option is mainly useful for developers. WP eMember has a few functions that can help you write code to dynamically protect some content of your site. The snippets of code on this page will give you an idea of how it can be used.

Video Tutorial

How to Protect a Post or Page From the Editor

WP eMember allows you to protect a post or page while you are editing it. When you are editing or writing a new post simply scroll down to the “eMember Protection Options” section shown in the following screenshot and apply the protection you want (it will display all the membership levels you have configured on your site so you can easily pick which levels you want to give access to):

Protect Post or Page from the editor

Video Tutorial

How to Protect a Section of a Post or Page (Partial Protection)

If you want to protect a section or sections of a post or page then simply wrap the section with the “emember_protected” shortcode.

The following screenshot shows an example of how a partially protected page may look like. You can protect multiple sections of the post/page using multiple blocks of section protection shortcodes.

section-partial-content-protection-example

Section Protection Video Tutorial

Take a look at the following shortcode examples. It will show you how you can use the partial protection feature:

Note: When you copy and paste the shortcode, make sure to paste it in the “Text” mode of the page editor to prevent any HTML code from getting copied.

Simple Section Protection Example

[emember_protected]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to logged-in members who have access to this post or page.

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection for Specific Membership Level Example

[emember_protected for="2-3-4"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to members who belong to the specific membership level specified above.

[/emember_protected]

Where 2,3,4 are the membership level IDs that you want to allow access to this section of content.

Section Protection for a Specific Member

[emember_protected member_id="1"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to the member whose Member ID is 1.

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection for Anyone Who is Logged In

If you want to just protect a section of a post or page for logged in member (you don’t care if the member’s status is expired or not) then use the following shortcode:

[emember_protected scope="verified_users_only"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to anyone who is logged-into the eMember system as a user (doesn't matter if his account is expired or not).

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection for Anyone Who is NOT Logged In

If you want to just protect a section of a post or page for non-logged in member (only anonymous visitors will see this section) then use the following shortcode (can be useful if you only want to show a message to the anonymous users):

[emember_protected scope="not_logged_in_users_only"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to a non-logged in user (anonymous visitors of your site will see this message).

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection for Expired Members Only

If you want to just protect a section of a page for expired members (only expired members will see the message) then use the following shortcode:

[emember_protected scope="expired"]

Only the expired members will be able to see this message.

[/emember_protected]

If you want to protect a section of a page for expired members of a particular level then use the following shortcode:

[emember_protected scope="expired" for="2"]

Only the expired members from membership level 2 will be able to see this message.

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection without the “Content is protected” Message

If you want to protect a section of a post or page without showing the “Content is protected” message to the non-logged in users then use the following shortcode (can be useful if you don’t even want them to know that there is a section of content there):

[emember_protected for="2-3-4" do_not_show_restricted_msg="1"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to members who belong to the specific membership level specified above. Also, the users who do not have access to this content won't see a "Content is protected" message.

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection without the Protected or Expired Message

The following section protection option protects the section without showing the “Content is protected” or “Account is expired” message (useful if you don’t even want them to know that there is a section of content there):

[emember_protected for="2-3-4" do_not_show_restricted_msg="1" do_not_show_expired_msg="1"]

Whatever content goes here is only visible to members who belong to the specific membership level specified above. Users who do not have access to this content won't see a "Content is protected" message. The expired members won't see the "Account is expired" message.

[/emember_protected]

Section Protection Not For Specific Membership Level

If you want to protect a section and make it NOT visible to a particular membership level then use the following shortcode:

[emember_protected not_for="1" do_not_show_restricted_msg="1"]

Whatever content goes here is NOT visible to members of membership level 1. All the other members can see this content.

[/emember_protected]

Using a Custom Message for the Non Members

This section protection shortcode can take another extra optional argument which can help you customize the text/message that is shown to non members.

Here is an example usage:

[emember_protected for="2-3-4" custom_msg='This is a custom message']

The content goes here. this content will be hidden and only available to members of membership level 2, 3 or 4.

[/emember_protected]

The following screenshot shows how this custom message is shown:

Section Protection Custom Message with HTML Link

You can use a HTML link in the custom message that you specify for the section protection shortcode. Remember to switch to the “Text” mode in the WordPress post/page editor if you are typing in HTML link code.

Here is an example shortcode usage:

[emember_protected for="2-3-4" custom_msg='This is a <a href="http://www.example.com">test link</a>']

The content goes here. this content will be hidden and only available to members of membership level 2, 3 or 4.

[/emember_protected]

Note

Just remember that when you want to use section protection on a post or page you should not protect the full post or the category that the post belongs to. When you apply category protection for a category, all the posts in that category is fully protected (category protection overrides all the small section protections in the post).

Section Protection in Action

You can see an example of how the section content protection work on the eMember demo site.

How to Manage Content Protection in WP eMember

You can manage the protection of specific posts, pages, categories, comments from the “Manage Content Protection” menu of the eMember plugin. You can also set protection of a post or page while editing it in the WordPress editor.

Quick Summary of Content Protection

You perform the following operations in the “Manage Content Protection” menu to protect content in eMember.

  1. Lock-down the content you want to protect via General Protection. Select the items you want protected while you have “General Protection” selected from the dropdown menu.
  2. Then select a membership level from the dropdown menu and select items you want accessible to that membership level. Do this step for all the membership levels.

Content Protection Video Tutorial

WP eMember Manage Content Protection

Content Protection Written Instruction

It is important to understand how the protection mechanism works. There are two steps to protecting and giving access to specific content:

  • First you need to protect the content by selecting “General Protection” from the drop down menu and checking the checkboxes next to the posts, pages, categories,comments that you want to protect (don’t forget to hit the ‘Set Protection’ button).
  • Now that you have all the important content locked down, you can start to selectively give access to it according to the membership levels. Select a membership level from the drop down menu and check the checkboxes next to the posts, pages, categories, comments that you want the members of this membership level to be able to view (Don’t forget to hit the Grant Access button).
WP eMember Content Protection Management

WP eMember Content Protection Management

To protect content for a specific membership level simply select the membership level from the drop down menu and check the checkbox next to the individual posts, pages, categories that you want to give acess to.

Selective Content Protection for Different Membership Levels

Selective Content Protection for Different Membership Levels

The easiest way to manage content protection is through the protection of “Categories”. It allows you to give access to all the posts or pages under a certain category without having to individually select each post or page. So for example, you can create a category called “Basic” and put all the posts and pages under this category that you want to give access to for the “Basic” Membership level.

Protecting a Section of a Post or Page

Site Wide Content Protection

Protecting Posts or Pages From the Editor