Creating an access group with SureMembers

With SureMembers, you can create separate access groups for different users on your website. This will help you control the access of various members of your site. In this document, we will explain the process of creating an access group and how you can assign users to an access group.

What is an access group in SureMembers?

Access group controls the access that a user has on your website. For example, if you would like to restrict access to certain pro content to paid subscribers, you can easily achieve this by using SureMembers.

Access group controls the access that a user has on your website. For example, to ensure that only paid subscribers can view certain premium content, access restrictions can be put in place.

Additionally, you will find options to Protect specific pages, set actions for Unauthorized access, and drip feed any content on your site. Everything is made available in one place under the Access Groups of SureMembers.

How to create Access Groups?

Step 1: Getting started

Once you download, install and activate the SureMembers plugin, please click on the SuremMebers to access the dashboard. Click on “Add New” to create a new access group.

Step 2: Adding a name

The very next step is to add a name for the access group. You can create a custom name such as premium members as per your requirements.

Step 3: Protected Content

You can restrict this group’s access to certain content on your website, such as posts, landing pages, courses, and so on, or you can restrict access to the entire website. Just click on the drop-down button next to the protected content and select the options of your choice. SureMembers also gives you the ability to exclude certain content from these restrictions.

Step 4: Drip Content

Dripping content is a technique for providing readers of your website with content. Before having access to the entire collection, users acquire content in bits and pieces, possibly over a period of several weeks or months. If you would like to use this technique, please click on the “Add Drip Content” button and add contents that you would like to drip. Select contents by typing the first few letters of the content name and selecting it from the drop-down. Add a timeline for when you would like your visitors to see the content.

You would also, need to align a specific newsletter or mentioned it on the site so that your users are notified once they have access to the specific file based on the Drip Content.

Step 5: Selecting Downloads

You can also add downloadable items that are available only to these particular members. Simply click on the add download button and select the content of your choice by clicking on the upload media button.

Step 6: Choosing an action for Unauthorized Access

You can select an action for other members of your sites as and when they try to access the content that is restricted to the premium members only. SureMembers gives you the option to either Redirect the members to a particular page of your choice or display a Message.

If you chose to redirect the customers, simply chose the redirect button and enter the URL where you would like to redirect the unauthorized members. If you chose to display a message, you will have the following options:

In-Content: Once enabled, this option will show the members a certain portion of the content. Please note that this option only works with blog posts.

Enable Excerpt: This option, when enabled, will allow the unauthorized member to see the excerpt of the blog post.

Message: This is the message that is going to be displayed to unauthorized members of your site. For example, “Please login to see this content” or “Please subscribe/upgrade to access this course”.

Button Text: Just below the message, SureMembers will automatically add an action button. You can type in the text that you would like to be displayed on the button.

Button URL: Add the URL that you would like the members to be re-directed once they click on the button.

Enable login button: If you would like to restrict certain content to logged-in users only, you can enable this option. It asks the user to log in to their account to access the restricted content.

Step 7: Expiration date

You can choose an expiry date for this specific access group. There are two options that you can choose from. You can either select a relative date by entering the number of days or a specific date when this membership will be expired. Users will be removed from the Access Group after the requested date exceeds the expiration date. This is extremely helpful when you create a membership website that requires members to renew their subscriptions after a certain period of time.

Step 8: User Role Sync

You can add certain user roles to this access group making the content restricted to only those types of users. You can select the default memberships that WordPress and other plugins offer.

Step 9: Selecting Priority

Priority can be a very useful option if you have multiple access groups. You can assign priority to any access group by entering a number in the priority field. Access groups with higher priority numbers will be executed first.

For instance, an access group with priority 10 will be given higher priority than an access group with priority 9, a lower number means lower priority.