Getting Started with SureMembers

Imagine you’re a fitness enthusiast running a website dedicated to health and wellness.

Now, your goal is to turn your valuable content into a source of income by offering it exclusively to certain visitors on your site.

Curious about achieving this? Well, here’s where content restriction plugins like SureMembers come into play.

This nifty plugin empowers you to establish access groups and control the content visibility on your website. Only those individuals who belong to the designated access group can access the restricted content.

The best part? You can charge users for entry into these exclusive access groups.

This concept isn’t limited to fitness instructors; it can be applied to any content you want to monetize, be it courses, blog posts, images, newsletters, and more.

In this article, we’ll dive into the world of SureMembers, exploring what it offers, how to set it up on your website, the process of creating access groups, adding members to these groups, adding downloadable items, and much more.

What Is SureMembers?

SureMembers is a WordPress plugin that simplifies restricting content on your website. It helps you create customized membership levels and control access to various sections of your WordPress site with ease.

With SureMembers, you can effortlessly set up exclusive content for different user groups, ensuring a personalized experience for your site visitors.

Let’s understand more with an example, Imagine you have a website that offers premium content such as in-depth tutorials, downloadable resources, and exclusive articles.

With SureMembers, you can create different membership levels tailored to your audience. Let’s say you have three membership levels: Basic, Premium, and VIP.

Basic Members:

• Access to general articles and blog posts.
• No access to premium or VIP content.

Premium Members:

• Access to all basic content.
• Exclusive access to in-depth tutorials and downloadable resources.
• No access to VIP content.

VIP Members:

• Access to all basic and premium content.
• Exclusive access to VIP-only articles, webinars, and special events.

How to Set Up SureMembers on Your Site

Simply follow these steps to sign up for SureMembers:

• Go to the SureMembers website to get started.

• Choose a plan, then complete the purchase.

• After making the purchase, you’ll receive an email containing the plugin file in a .zip format, along with the license activation code.
• Download the .zip file and copy the license key for further use.

• Go to your WordPress site where you want to restrict content, then install and activate the SureMembers plugin.

Next, you will need to activate your license key. To do that:

• Click on the newly visible SureMembers menu item on your WordPress sidebar, head to the top-right corner of the screen, and then click on Unlicensed.

You’ll see a screen that looks like the image below:

• Paste the copied license key from the previous step into this License Key field.
• Click on the Activate License button to complete the activation.

Great job! You’ve successfully wrapped up the installation process for SureMembers!

How to Create Your First Access Group

Now, it’s time to take the next step by configuring content restrictions and access groups.

Access groups help you put restrictions on specific sections of your website. They are the ones that allow you to restrict the content on your website.

To create an access group, you can follow the steps below.

• Go to SureMembers, then click on Add New to create your access group.

• Name your Access Group, for example, “Members-Only” or “Premium Access.”

Choose Content to Restrict

Once you’ve defined your Access Group, it’s time to decide what content you want to protect.

SureMembers allows you to restrict multiple types of content. Here, we choose to restrict content for the entire website:

To learn more about the detailed setup of these protection options, please refer to the official documentation here.

Content restrictions in SureMembers are categorized into the following:

• Entire Website: Restricts content on the entire website.
• All Posts: Restricts all the posts. Only authorized users can access them.
• All Categories Archive: Restricts the categories section on a post.
• All Tags Archive: Restricts all the tags.
• All Pages: Restricts all the pages on your website.
• Specific Pages, Posts, or Taxonomies: Restricts individual pages, articles, or content types. You control what’s off-limits.
• URL matching: Restricts specific URLs on your website.
• Categories, Archives, or Tags: Restricts broader content groups. Only Access Group members can see them.

Choose Content to Exclude

Whenever you select the content to restrict, SureMembers also allows you to exclude content you don’t want to restrict from users. Here’s how you can do it:

• Select content from Exclude Pages/Posts/Taxonomies, etc. list that you want to exclude.

How to Handle Unauthorized Access

In SureMembers, you can control what happens when a user without proper permissions tries to access your restricted content.

There are two ways to achieve this:

Redirecting to an Error Page: If someone who doesn’t have permission tries to view restricted content, you can set up SureMembers to send them to an error page.

• Select the Redirect option from the dropdown in the Unauthorized Access section:

• Enter the URL for your error page in the Redirect URL field by clicking on it.

Ensure the error page you specify provides clear instructions for users on how to gain access.

Displaying a Custom Message: Instead of redirecting, you can show a custom message to inform users about the restricted content.

• Select the Message option from the dropdown list

• Enable In Content mode to show the error message within the blog post.

• Enable Excerpt to display a preview of the content to regular users

• Write your error message here.

• You can also add a button for user redirection. Specify the Button Text with clear instructions and provide the Button URL for it.

• Enable the Login button. The login button redirects users to your website’s login page.

• Save your Access Group

How to Set Up Drip Content

Content dripping is a feature in SureMembers that lets you schedule the release of your content to users over a period of time.

For example, you can set it up to unveil new courses on Learndash every week. Courses can be released weekly or after specific time intervals, such as Week 1, Week 2, and so forth.

To set it up on your website, follow these steps:

• Click on the Add Drip Content button.

• Choose the content you want to schedule.

• Select the date and time after which the content will be released.

There are two types of date formats available in SureMembers:

1. After duration: Specify the exact number of days and time until the selected content is released.

1. Specific Date: Specify the exact calendar date and time after which the content will be released.

• You can choose to add multiple scheduled releases by clicking the Add Drip Content button again.

How to Set Expiry Date for Access Groups

Access Groups in SureMembers can be configured to expire, allowing you to control the duration of user access to your content.

To enable Access Groups to expire, follow these steps:

• Inside the Access Group settings, turn on the option to Enable Access Group Expiration

• Define Expiry Date. There are two date formats available in SureMembers:

1. Relative Date: Indicates the number of days until the access group expires.

1. Specific Date: Indicates the precise calendar date when the access group expires.

You can save your access group settings by clicking on the Save Access Group button in the top right corner.

How to Add Downloadable Items

SureMembers’ Downloads feature lets you share digital files exclusively with specific groups, like members of a site or course.

Access is limited to users in that group, downloadable items can many things such as images, PDFs, mp4s, ZIPs, and much more.

For example, imagine you’re managing a newsletter. You could have special content, like exclusive guides or bonus materials, visible only to subscribers who’ve joined a premium tier.

Here’s how you can enable this feature:

• Click on the Add Downloads button and select the file that you want to add.

• Click on the Upload Media button and select the file that you want to add.
• Click on the Choose button.

• Copy the download link

If you have multiple access groups, the shared file becomes available to all of these access groups.

You can share the download link with your members in any way you prefer—paste it on a website button, send it via email, or post it in a special customer dashboard.

Remember, only those added to the access group can view the content behind the URL

How to Configure User Roles

The User Role Sync feature allows you to set up and prioritize user roles like Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber, each with specific permissions.

You can even create custom roles with unique settings.

When you adjust a user’s role or level, this feature ensures their permissions and privileges update automatically throughout the entire website.

It’s a helpful way to avoid access issues, maintain security, and ensure consistency across your site.

To learn more about user roles and how to configure them, please refer to the official documentation here.

How to Use Shortcodes in SureMembers

A shortcode is a bit of code you insert into a WordPress page or post for added functionality.

With SureMembers you can use a shortcode to wrap protected content in, making it easy to add membership features to your website.

• Copy and paste the shortcode from the bottom right of the screen to add protected content anywhere on your website.

Congratulations on taking your first steps with SureMembers!

We encourage you to explore all that SureMembers has to offer and to use it to create a membership site that is truly your own.