How to Configure Paid Memberships With the Memberful WordPress Plugin

[00:00:00]if you want to add paid memberships to your WordPress website you're in the right place member Falls WordPress plugin allows you to restrict access to private members only content and then gives you the tools to sell subscriptions for people to access it in this video I want to show you how that works so here's what we're going to be going through in this video first of all we're going to talk about what's possible with member Falls WordPress plugin then we're going to go through a step-by-step walkthrough and I'm not going to teach you everything so I'm not going to teach you how to set up a WordPress website but we're going to talk about that and then we're going to talk about how to install memberful on your website once you have it up then we're going to create your membership plans and you're going to add purchase links to your site so people can buy those plans then we're going to restrict access to your members only content so that people who aren't active members cannot access it then we're going to add account management links so that your subscribers can manage their account then we're going to test the member experience so you can see what it looks like and finally we're going to go live so let's start by talking about what's possible well first of all you're going to be able to sell member full plans from your website you're also going to be able to restrict access to content on your website members are going to be able to sign into your website via member full members can manage their accounts without leaving your site and to make things easier for you you're going to be able to bulk restrict access to many posts at once the first thing we're going to need is a WordPress website now I have my WordPress website set up right here it's called Jen's Bakery and I'm going to open up my admin dashboard and I'm going to go to install member Falls plugin so we're going to go into plugins then we're going to click add new and we're going to search for memberful and you can see that there's a member full WordPress plugin and we're going to install this plugin by clicking install now then I'm going to click activate and it's going to tell me that I need a member full account which I already have and hopefully you do too and we need to paste something here we need to paste something called the WordPress registration key so the way to get that is to go to your member full admin dashboard and we're going to click on settings connect with your website and then it's going to give us two choices whether we're using Wordpress or we're using something else and of course in this case we want to use WordPress so I'm going to click on that and look at that I get a WordPress registration key which is what I needed so I'm going to click on copy here and then I'm going to go back to my WordPress admin dashboard and I paste that key in here and then I click connect to memberful and just like that we have an active memberful plugin that is working instead of Wordpress fantastic you can tell that there are some settings here that you might want to read through and decide whether you want to enable or disable and you have some other options here but these are more advanced now before we continue and start using this plugin I want to go back to my member full dashboard and we're going to create a membership plan that people can join so I'm going to click on plans and then new plan I'm going to add a plan name I'm just going to call it premium I'm going to set a price let's say ten dollars and that's about it that's all that I want to set here there's a lot more settings here as you can see and you can look through our documentation to read more about each of them but right now I just need a Premium plan that's ten dollars a month and that it renews indefinitely as you can see here in the summary so I'm going to click create plan and you'll notice that there's a plan purchase link right here we're gonna need this soon but for now I'm just gonna go back to our WordPress site and I'm going to create a post that I want to make restricted so I want to create a post that only active members can access so I'm going to click on posts and by the way this works for Pages as well but I'm going to create a post right now I'm going to click add new and I'm going to name this post delicious cupcakes and I have some content here about how to bake some really delicious cupcakes which I just pasted in here into the content box now you'll notice that I'm using wordpress's uh old editor they have a new one now called Gutenberg and it's very likely likely that you're going to be seeing that editor instead of what I'm seeing here that's all right you can use memory Fool's plugin with either of them and you just have to go scroll down and you'll find this box here that says memberful colon restrict access and this box is divided into two sections the section on the left is going to allow us to choose who can access this post and the section on the right is going to allow us to give a message to the non-members to maybe in entice them to join our membership so I'm gonna select the Premium plan that we just created and then I'm gonna delete whatever's on this box because I want to add a custom message here I want to write something new that is going to entice people to join now I'm not going to waste your time by writing some elaborate message so this time I'm just going to say join here and then this is where I'm gonna paste our plan purchase link because remember this is going to be seen by non-members only so I'm going to go back to member full and I'm going to go back to the Premium plan and I'm gonna click on copy for the plan purchase link because this is the link that anybody can open to purchase your plan so I'm going to paste that link here and of course this looks very ugly there are tools within WordPress to create a nicer looking link so I'm going to delete this and instead I'm going to create a link by writing the text that I want people to see which is purchase your subscription now and then I'm going to select that text and I'm going to click on this icon here that says insert edit link and I'm going to paste our link here this is what I copied from our member fold dashboard of course so I'm going to click apply so now we have this really nice link that says purchase your subscription now and when people click on that link they're going to be able to subscribe to this plan and therefore they're going to gain access to this post because remember we specified that only people with this specific plan the Premium plan can access a post now of course there are many more settings here you can make this post available to any member with an active subscription to any plan at all or you can make this post available to all members whether they're still active or they're now inactive because their membership expired so you can play around with these settings and find the one that you need so with that I'm going to scroll back up and publish this post and so now we have this post that members are going to be able to see completely but none members are only going to see the marketing content that I added down in the member full box at the bottom of the page now there's one more thing that I want to teach you before we look at the members experience here I want to teach you how to add a manual link here for signing in and also for managing your account if you're a member so we're going to go back to the WordPress admin dashboard here and I'm going to click on appearance menus and here I'm able to add new links to the menu now there's a category here called memberful links and these are links that already work automatically for signing in or for managing your account and by the way if people are not signed in they're not going to see the account link and if they are signed in they're not going to see the sign in link so they're smart and that's why you want to use these links because you want non-members or people who are logged out to only be able to see the signing link while you want members to be able to only see the account link and the sign out link so I'm going to add these but before that I just want to point out that you might not be able to see this right away and you might have to scroll all the way back up again click on screen options and then make sure that member full links is checked here so with that out of the way we have this memberful links box right here and we're going to add these links to the menu I'm going to check all of them and click add to menu and there we go so I'm going to save the menu and I'm going to go back to the website to see if it worked when I refresh to the page I see two new links account and sign out and if I sign out all I see is the sign in link Isn't that cool now as I said I want to show you what it looks like for a member to be able to go through the whole purchase flow and gain access to this post so let's say I'm not a member and you can see the sign in link here which means that I'm not signed in and you can see the marketing content right here so you can see that I'm not signed in I'm not a member right now so I'm going to click on our purchase link now and you'll see that there's a checkout that opens up right within the window so people haven't left your site they're still on your WordPress site and now they can check out so I'm going to fill in these details and I'm going to enter a test credit card number which you can learn about in our documentation and then I'll click place your order and just like that our order is complete and you can see that there are some custom Fields here that uh the system is asking us to fill in these are beyond the scope of this video but you can learn about them in our documentation as well I'm just going to fill in whatever and when I go back to the page and I refresh there we go now I have access to the cupcake recipe so as you can see the checkout experience for your members is going to be super smooth super quick and streamlined and one final detail is that memberful starts in test mode all of your transactions are going to be test transactions they're not going to be real they're not going to be real payments so at some point you want to start collecting real payments and you do that by going to your dashboard again and going to account then activate account and then follow the steps on this page to add a payment method pick a member full plan and then connect to stripe so you can start collecting real payments so let's do a quick recap of what we learned in this video first of all we learned about what was possible and then we went through the step-by-step walkthrough where first of all you're supposed to set up a WordPress website but once you've done that you can install memberful on your website then we created your plans then we added purchase links to your site we restricted access to your members only content we added account management links we tested the member experience as if you were a member and then we went live that's it I hope this video helped you to set everything up and if you run into any obstacles or you have any other questions please feel free to contact our support team and we'll be more than happy to help out