When WP-Members™ was first offered, the primary use of the plugin was to protect content in posts. WordPress itself was primarily used as a blogging platform where most content was actually in posts as well. With the continued development of the WP platform and the widespread use of it as a lightweight CMS, that has evolved to situations where users are using it more as a CMS and managing pages more than posts. (If you don’t really understand the difference, there is an overview at WordPress.com.)
WP-Members™ has provided blocking for both posts and pages since the very early versions. But it seems lately I have been receiving a lot of support questions regarding the blocking of pages.
The default installation for the plugin is to use post excerpts above the ‘more’ tag if the user is not logged in. This is true of both posts and pages. You can turn this feature off in the plugin’s settings by unchecking “show excerpts.” Turning this off will not effect the use of the ‘more’ tag for post summary pages. It only serves to turn off excerpts on the actual post or page if the user is not logged in. If the user is not logged in, they will be provided with a message indicating that the content is restricted, the login form, and the registration form. If excerpts are turned on, then all content before the ‘more’ tag will be presented before this.
Some important things to consider:
- First, if excerpts are turned on (“show excerpts” in the plugin admin panel), you MUST use the ‘more’ tag on any protected pages. If you don’t, all of your page content will be visible before the login form. If you don’t want your pages to function this way, you need to turn off “show excerpts.”
- If you use the ‘more’ tag on a page, you cannot have any use of the word “more” in the excerpt. If you use the “more” in your excerpt, the parser will truncate your excerpt there rather than at the actual ‘more’ tag.
- You cannot have any shortcodes in the excerpt. I am working on this for future upgrades, but at this point, if you use a shortcode in the excerpt (including WP-Members™ own new shortcodes), they will not be parsed and executed.
The default install for the plugin is to not block pages by default. If you leave this setting, you can block any individual page by using a custom field “block” and setting the value to “true”. Important: this is case sensitive! Do not put this in as “Block” or it will not work.
If you have changed the default setting to block pages by default, you can unblock pages by using a custom field of “unblock” with a value of “true”. (Note: also case sensitive.)
If you are using either of the above two custom fields and you have left the plugin’s setting to show excerpts, you MUST use the ‘more’ tag on the blocked pages. If you don’t want to do that, turn off the show excerpts setting.
Troubleshooting
If you have just installed the plugin and find that your protected pages are showing content before the login that should not be there, check to see if you have the default setting of “show excerpts” in the plugin’s admin panel. If you do, you either need to turn this off, or use a ‘more’ tag where you want the excerpt.
If you are using a custom field to block or unblock a page and you are not getting the expected behavior, double check that you have not inadvertently capitalized the custom field (i.e. “Block” or “Unblock”). If you have, you are going to need to remove this from the database manually.
Hey, love the plugin!
I have your login widget setup on the left sidebar. Problem is if a users hits a protected post – he comes up seeing login for in the widget and in the protected post area. How do I prevent the latter? Thanks!
RB
Hi Rob – I’m glad you like the plugin. The behavior you described is part of the process flow of the plugin. A login will always display for protected content if the user is not logged in.
Thanks. This results though in two login forms side by side – I want to rely on the login widget in the sidebar……
I hear what you are saying, and that might make sense for something that was a customized site specific solution. But in the one-size-fits-all world of WP plugins, you have to consider that not every page/post template utilizes a sidebar (WP default twentytwelve theme for example).
OK – thanks for responding.
I have installed the plugin and have gone thru all settings. When I login, it gives me full access to the admin site. I added the patch to the function PHP and it now doesn’t show the main toolbar, but still shows the “edit” button, which takes you right back to the admin site. What I am looking to do is only allow access to certain pages after login, nothing else changes. What am I doing wrong and how do I correct it?
Thanks for your help!
Are you logging in with your own username?
Hi Chad! Thank you for this great plugin! Unfortunately I have a little problem with it. I have set up a restriction to registered members. If you watch the restricted content before logging in, you can see an message that you do not have the rights to see it. So it’s ok, but after this you log in and you still can’t see it. You have to force refresh the page to see that you are actually logged in, and then you can see the restricted content too. How could I eliminate this annoying force refresh step and fix the problem? Thank you for your help!
It’s possible that you have something interfering with the process of validating that a user is in a logged in state. This all occurs before anything is sent downstream to the browser. It could be something like a cache plugin, but could be something else as well. I would suggest testing with plugins disabled and bringing them back up one by one, testing login each time. That will help you determine if you can rule out any plugin conflicts. If that’s not it, test the same way with the default theme to see if it’s something in your theme.
Hi,
Let me say thank you for this great plugin!
I have installed the plugin and have a problem when i tried to register with another username and email. But its not delivered to another email also mine. So, i have to activate new user manually from my primary account (dashboard).
Would you tell me how i can fix that ?
Thank you again
The plugin uses the WP function wp_mail for sending. You need to verify that wp_mail is functioning properly. (Before that though, you should verify that there wasn’t a delay in sending, or that it didn’t just go to your junk mail folder.) There are some suggestions in the FAQs for troubleshooting, and you could also visit the WordPress forums.