Bulk Update Pages and Posts will not load

[LCMEFarrah]

Hello,

I have almost 3000 posts and need to protect batches of them to certain membership levels. For example: Membership Level 1 has access to all posts in Category A.

But…

When I use the PROTECT CATEGORY function to protect Category A to only Membership Level 1, it doesn’t actually update the posts in Category A to select Membership Level 1 at the bottom of the post.

When I try to use the Page/Post Protect tab absolutely NOTHING will load (I managed once to get the first page of posts to load but when I went to the section then a critical error occured.

For reference…I a hosting my site on SiteGround.

What is a solution to add the posts to the new membership level since none of the provided ways seem to work with the plugin?

[The Assurer]

What you’re describing actually lines up with two known limitations + a likely server-side issue with the Simple Membership plugin—so you’re not doing anything wrong.

✅ 1. Important: “Protect Category” does NOT update posts individually
This is the key misunderstanding:
👉 The “Protect Category” feature does NOT write/update the membership level into each post.

It applies dynamic protection at runtime
The posts themselves will still show no membership level selected in the editor
So what you’re seeing here is expected behavior, not a failure.

👉 In other words:

✔ Category protection = works globally
❌ It does NOT modify the post meta (no bulk assignment)

⚠️ 2. Page/Post Protect tab not loading (critical error)
This part is NOT normal and is the real issue.

Based on your description:
Only first page loads once
Then crashes / critical error
You have ~3000 posts

👉 This strongly suggests:
A server/resource or conflict issue

From experience with this plugin, the most common causes are:

🔹 (A) Memory / execution limits (very likely with 3000 posts)
The bulk interface tries to load a lot of data → crashes

🔹 (B) Plugin or theme conflict
JavaScript or PHP error breaking the UI

🔹 (C) Hosting-level caching (SiteGround uses aggressive caching)
This can break admin AJAX requests

🔧 3. Recommended troubleshooting steps (in order)
Step 1 — Check error logs (VERY important)

Ask SiteGround for your error_log or check:
Site Tools → Statistics → Error Log
This will tell you exactly what is crashing.

Step 2 — Increase PHP limits
Ask SiteGround or set:
memory_limit = 512M
max_execution_time = 300
With 3000 posts, this is often required.

Step 3 — Do a conflict test
Switch to a default theme (like Twenty Twenty-Three)
Disable all plugins except:
Simple Membership

Then try:
👉 WP Admin → WP Membership → Page/Post Protection

If it works → it’s a conflict.

You can also try:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/forums/topic/test-for-plugin-and-theme-conflict-before-posting-an-issue-or-a-bug/
Step 4 — Disable caching (important for SiteGround)

SiteGround uses:
Dynamic Cache
Memcached

You should:
Disable caching temporarily
Or exclude admin pages

[Author]

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