Membership levels allow you to easily control and assign what content your members CAN and CANNOT see on your site.
When a visitor becomes a member, he/she is assigned to one of the membership levels you create. Then this member can see content based on the membership level.
You can think of the membership level as “category” for your members. You will assign members to any of the membership levels that you have created. The member will then get access according to the level.
Adding a New Membership Level
Go to the “Membership Level” menu from the membership plugin’s admin interface. See screenshot below:
Next, click on the “Add New” button to add a new membership access level.
Give your membership level a name and choose the membership access duration value then hit the “Add New Membership Level” button.
You can use one of the following types of access duration for your membership level
- No Expiry
- Expire After XX Days (example: 90 days)
- Expire After XX Weeks (example: 14 weeks)
- Expire After XX Months (example: 6 months)
- Expire After XX Years (example: 3 years)
- Expire on a Fixed Date (example: 01/01/2022)
Membership Level and Access Duration
The membership level controls how long a member of that level has access to the content.
For example: if you have created a level with a 1 year duration, then members who belong to that level will get access to the content for 1 year from the date they joined. After that time, their account will expire and they will need to renew or upgrade their account. If they renew then they will get access for another year and so on.
The exception to this is if you use a “fixed date expiry”. If you use a specific/fixed date expiry then the expiration date will be set to that particular date. Renewing will not automatically change that fixed expiry date.
You can create as many membership levels as you want. So create a membership level for each different variations of access that you need to offer on your site. Then you can assign members to a membership level based on the kind of access to content and expiry you want for them.
The following section has some basic examples of the 3 different types of “Expiry Setup” and their common usage.
1) No Expiry (Ongoing Membership Type Setup)
This option is typically used for a free membership level or for a subscription payment type setup.
For example: if you want to create a PayPal subscription button to charge a monthly fee for a membership then you can use this option. The member’s account will be active as long as the subscription continues. If the subscription payment is stopped, the corresponding member account will also be stopped.
2) Expire After (Duration Type Setup)
This option is typically used to sell a one time payment membership. The member can renew also. It can be used for subscription payments also.
For example: If you want to charge $50 for a 6 months membership then you can use this option. The member can renew by making another payment before the 6 months is over and then the membership will be extended for another 6 months.
You can use it to offer a trial membership also. For example: you can setup a 14 days duration membership that you offer for free. The member will have 14 days to make a payment to upgrade his account or the account will be stopped after the 14 days.
3) Expire on a Fixed Date (Hard Expiry Date)
This option can be used to offer a membership that will expire on a particular date. No extension what so ever. It can be used to offer one time membership that ends on a particular date.