Get Visitors to Create an Account Prior to Completing a Membership Payment

The basic membership registration process involves your customers paying for a specific membership level prior to receiving an email with a registration link. After they receive the registration link, they can then fill in all the required details to be apart of that membership level. After they complete the form, all the protected content they have paid for is revealed. (Read more about The Basic Membership Registration Process).

Register for an Account Before Payment

The majority of our Simple Membership plugin users use the above mentioned basic method. However, you can also choose to make the visitors signup for an account before you accept any payment from them.

This documentation will outline the method of creating an account first. It involves your customers signing up to a free level with their details prior to paying for the paid level.

Overview of How this Registration Method Works

The following steps will show you how the registration and payment flow works when you use this method.

Note: This is just an example that I setup in my site. Your setup will likely look a little different.

Step 1) Your customers come to your website and read the information you have supplied about the membership(s) you offer.

Step 2) They decide that they would like to become a paid member of your site and follow the link that tells them to join. In this example, my customers will be clicking on the ‘Site Membership’ menu option.

Step 3) This link then takes them to a registration form that they will complete (before paying for one of the paid membership levels).

Step 4) After they have completed the registration form (which is for a free account) they are prompted to login.

Step 5) Once they log into the site, they will see a payment button for the paid membership levels that you offer.

Step 6) They can pay for the paid membership level at this stage. After a successful transaction, the plugin is notified by the payment gateway and their membership account is upgraded from the free level to the paid level. Your customer will then have access to the paid content that they just paid for).

How to Configure the ‘Register Prior to Payment’ Method

First, I am going to create a free membership level that will be used as a placeholder level. This free level is basically used to allow the users to create an account/profile on the site. Then the user can log into the site and make a payment for a paid level and the plugin applies that level to his/her existing account (nothing needs to be done after the payment).

Step 1) Create a Free Registration Membership Level

1. Click on ‘Membership Levels’ under the ‘WP Membership’ plugin.
2. Click the ‘Add Level’ tab.
3. Give your level a name (Something like Basic Account)
4. The WP role should be left as ‘Subscriber’ and the duration left as ‘No Expiry’.
5. Click the ‘Add New Membership Level’ button.

Step 2) Create a Free Registration Form

1. Copy the ID of the membership level that you created in step 1 (in this example my membership ID is ’14’).
2. Create a post/page and give it a title. This will be the page where your customers will come and register for a basic account.
3. Enter the following shortcode on your page and replace ’14’ with your actual membership level ID:

[swpm_registration_form level=14]

Once you publish this page, you will have created a registration form where your customers can go to and enter in their details. You can then add this page to your websites menu or sidebar (where you show the link to this page is entirely up to you).

Step 3) Install and Activate the ‘Simple Membership After Login Redirection’ Addon

A free addon that allows you to configure after login redirection. We are going to use it to redirect the users of this free level to the payment page (so after they register and login, they get sent to the page containing the payment buttons)

Step 4) Apply After Login Redirection

Now that you have installed and activated the addon, an ‘After Login Redirection’ field will appear for each individual membership level.

1. Copy the URL of the page where you have configured buttons for membership payment.
2. Click on ‘Membership Levels’ under the ‘WP Membership’ plugin.
3. Click the ‘Edit’ option for the free level you created in step 1.
4. Paste the URL of your membership payment page in the ‘After Login Redirection’ field.
5. Save the changes you have made.

Now after your customer completes their registration details they will be redirected to the page with payment buttons.