The Simple Membership Plugin includes a feature that allows you to manually approve your members. With the manual approval process, members cannot log into the site until a site administrator has reviewed the registration and set their account status to “active”.
Table of Contents
- Manual Approval vs. Email Activation
- Manual Approval Setup Steps
- Alternative Manual Approval Setup Using 2 Membership Levels
- Sending a Quick Email to the Member
- Email Activation Feature
Manual Approval vs. Email Activation
Manual Approval requires the site administrator to review and manually activate the member’s account before they can log in. This approach gives the admin control over who gains access but involves additional steps for the admin.
Email Activation, on the other hand, is a self-service process where the registering member receives an activation link via email. The member simply needs to click the link to activate their account—no admin intervention is required. This method ensures a smooth and automated onboarding experience.
Manual approval and email activation are mutually exclusive options. If you intend to use the email activation process, refer to the email activation documentation for setup instructions.
Manual Approval Setup Steps
The following steps outline how to set up the Simple Membership Plugin for a manual approval process:
Step #1) Go to the settings menu of the Simple Membership plugin.
Step #2) Set the “Default Account Status” field to “Pending“.
Now, all members who register will have an account status of “pending,” preventing them from logging into the site immediately after registration.
As the site admin, you can review the pending accounts in the members menu and set them to “active” when ready.
To apply manual approval on a per-membership-level basis, set the ‘Default Account Status’ value within each membership level accordingly.
Step #3) Go to the “Email Settings” menu and edit the content of the “Registration Complete” email to include a message such as:
Your account is under review. You will be able to log into the site after an admin approves your account.
Here’s an example of how to customize the “Registration Complete” email for manual approval:
This email informs the user that their account will be reviewed and approved. They cannot log in until the approval process is complete.
Step #4) In the “Email Settings” menu scroll down to the “Email Settings (Manual Account Approval)” section. Enable the Send Notification After Approval option to automatically send a notification email to the member once their account is approved. You can also customize the email content. See the screenshot below for an example.
Step #5) To review a user’s account, go to the Members menu in the admin dashboard and click the View/Edit link for the member’s profile. After reviewing the profile details, scroll down to the Additional Member Actions section. Click the Approve Account button to set the account status to Active. If you’ve enabled the notification option, the manual approval confirmation email will be sent automatically.
See the screenshot below for an example.
Alternative Manual Approval Setup Using 2 Membership Levels
Our manual approval process requires the account status to be updated to ‘active’ before login is allowed. If you want the users to be able to log in and enjoy some protected content while they are waiting for the admin to approve the account, you can try the following setup that utilizes 2 membership levels.
Admin Verification Required: Create this level as the initial entry point where users will register. Set the default account status to ‘active’ so users can log into the site. You can give access to some content for this membership level so members can enjoy those.
Main Membership Level: Create this level for full access to content. Site admins will review members from the ‘Admin Verification Required’ level and then upgrade them to this level, which gives them full access to content.
Sending a Quick Email to the Member
When reviewing a user’s account, you may need to ask the member some questions or provide additional information. You can use the Send a Notification Email option to quickly email the member when saving their profile. Refer to the sending a quick notification email documentation to learn how to do this.
Email Activation Feature
The Simple Membership plugin includes an email activation feature, which can serve as an alternative to manual approval on certain websites. Check out how the email activation feature works.
Please note that manual approval and email activation are mutually exclusive options. Therefore, if you intend to utilize the manual approval process, do not activate the email activation feature.