You may have heard that building a membership website using WordPress is a wonderful method to monetize or generate money with your website. Do you, however, understand what a membership site is?
The platform does not offer any options for restricting part (or all) of your website content to members exclusively. Plugins can help one with setting up a website.
What is a WordPress membership site?
If a website allows one to register or sign up, it can qualify as a membership site. Any website that individuals may visit, join up, and become members qualify.
However, below are certain criteria to make it a membership site:
- They host material that can only be accessed by members.
- To access some material, you must first register and, in certain circumstances, pay a membership fee.
- Members often have their own profiles that they may modify.
- A network has formed around your site.
WordPress membership sites are websites where users pay a subscription in return for the material.
What disqualifies a site as a membership site?
For some, but not all, users, a membership site gives different sorts of access, incentives, or material. This definition highlights an essential point: it has nothing to do with how individuals get access, whether you give services, or how that access is marketed. A subscription site sells an item through recurring fees. Although a subscription site is not always a membership site, membership sites can contain a subscription component. Recurring billing capabilities are commonly used to collect money on subscription sites, such as subscription boxes, magazines, or other products that are sent regularly.
Why are plugins important?
A plugin is a software application that you may use to install, or “plugin,” the parts you’ll need to administer and maintain your WordPress site properly.
There are many free plugins available for WordPress, but there are also many commercial plugin solutions that may help you design and personalize a site that is tailored to your business’s needs.
Must-have plugins for your membership website:
- Membership & Content Restriction is a one-stop-shop for restricting content and creating custom subscription plans. You may create numerous membership tiers with this plugin, each granting access to different parts of your website.
- WP-Members enables posts, pages, and custom post kinds when it comes to the types of material you may limit. The plugin’s ability to offer previews of restricted cosplay is maybe our favorite feature. The free edition of the WP-Members plugin, on the other hand, does not help us to manage or process user registrations. Add-ons can be used to add this capability.
- The WordPress membership site plugins we’ve looked at thus far are mostly concerned with the login process and subscription. There is, however, another crucial feature of WordPress member sites: user profile capability. Giving your users the ability to personalize their profiles is a simple and effective approach to increase engagement and encourage them to return.After all, if someone is ready to put effort into enhancing their profile, they are more likely to stay on your site. With this in mind, Ultimate Member allows you to choose which members may make updates to their profiles. You also have the option of adding user registration sections to your sites and restricting certain areas of your website.
- Simple Membership is similar to Membership & Content Restriction in terms of functionality. You may use this plugin to establish various membership tiers and accept PayPal payments. Users will be able to access certain material depending on whatever tier they subscribe to. It’s entirely up to you which posts and pages are limited to certain levels. You can also try a different WordPress membership plugin if these are not fit for you.
Steps to create a WordPress membership site:
- The first step is to make user registrations available on your website. To do so, navigate to the General tab of your WordPress dashboard’s Settings. When you get there, search for the Membership option and tick the box that says Anyone may register. After that, scroll down and save the update to your settings, and you’re ready to go. Your WordPress membership site’s subscription tiers will be created next.
- A new Membership & Content Restriction tab will appear in your dashboard when you install the plugin. That array should be empty at this point. You’ll need to give each plan a name and a summary when you create it. You choose the name, but make sure the summary contains as much information as possible about the strategy. Choose your subscription plans carefully and then proceed to the next step.
- It’s time to decide what material you’ll restrict on your WordPress membership site now that you’ve allowed registration and set up subscription tiers. To do so, go to the WordPress editor for the page or post you wish to hide and conceal. Remember to save your modifications to your content when you’re finished. Then just go through all of your settings once you have done all the above steps.
Conclusion
One can easily hire WordPress developers to help them set up a membership site. Using WordPress to create a membership site is a wonderful method to secure your material by limiting who has access to it. WordPress can also be monetized for your business or company.