• import a CSV of your members to update or merge membership data
• import a CSV of members to create new memberships (and even create new user accounts if needed)
• export all members, or export members based on status, plan, start date, or expiration date
• export selected members to CSV using a bulk action

This document will show you how to import or export members using the native Memberships import and export capabilities, along with creating memberships for existing users.

If you want to export members to move them to MailChimp, check out MailChimp for Memberships, which will automatically sync your member list with a MailChimp list and keep it updated as members change status.

Developers: You may also want to check out this community plugin to add CLI support for imports, which imports via command line for large data sets, and our REST API documentation, which lets you read user membership data.

Exporting members

You may want to export members to an external service, such as an email service, to segment your newsletters by status or plan type (MailChimp users may be interested in MailChimp for Memberships instead). You may also use a member CSV to export members, make changes, then re-import / update memberships. These are possible with the native exporter.

The exporter will provide several columns, such as the user membership ID; membership plan ID, slug, and name; member email; member name; and membership start date. You can view example import and export CSV files in this Google Sheet — note that there are several sheets that you can choose from at the bottom.

A quick note: when members are exported, the member_since and membership_expiration columns will show the member start and end dates (respectively) in the site’s selected timezone. You can import these members later, just be sure to select the site timezone for the import file as well.

If you would like to export in UTC time instead, you can add this small code snippet wherever you keep custom code  to change the exported time:

add_filter( 'wc_memberships_csv_export_user_memberships_dates_in_utc', '__return_true' );

To export members, go to WooCommerce > Memberships > Import / Export, and ensure you’re on the “Export to CSV” tab. Here you can configure export options to export all members or groups of members.

Combinations of these settings can be used to get a customized list of members.

• Plan – Select plans if you’d like to export only members belonging to certain plans. Leave this blank to export members of any plan.
• Status – Select membership statuses if you’d like to export only members who have certain statuses (ie only “active” and “complimentary” members). Leave this blank to export members with any status.
• Start Date – You can optionally restrict the export based on the member’s start date. Add a range to export members who signed up during that date range; you can also leave ranges open ended, such as “From ___ to 2016-05-01”, which will give you any member who signed up before May 1, 2016. Leave this blank to ignore start date in the export.
• End Date – You can optionally restrict the export based on the member’s expiration date. Add a range to export memberships that expire during that date range; you can also leave ranges open ended, such as “From ___ to 2016-05-01”, which will give you any member whose membership expired before May 1, 2016. (This would also exclude open-ended / unlimited memberships!) Leave this blank to ignore expiration date in the export.
• Meta Data – Enable this to include all meta data for a membership, such as paused date, or data added by other plugins
• Separate fields by – Changes the CSV delimiter, and defaults to comma; only change this if you know what you’re doing.

Click “Export” to generate your CSV file. Note that you must keep your browser window open until the export completes; closing the browser window will abort the export.

Bulk exporting members

You can also export a selected group of members from the “Members” list. Click the checkmarks next to the desired members, then select the “Export to CSV” bulk action. When you click “Apply”, a CSV export of the selected members is generated.

Troubleshooting exports

• If your CSV file isn’t generated, please double-check any export options you’ve set. You may be using option to limit the member list that do not correspond to any memberships on your site.

If these troubleshooting steps do not help you, please submit a help request and we’d be happy to assist.

Import via grant access action

Before you decide that you need to import members, you should consider using the “Grant access” action for your plans to programmatically create memberships. Here’s a good set of questions to ask yourself before determining whether you should use this or an import:

• Do you already have existing orders for purchases of your membership product? Use “Grant access” — this will create new memberships and tie them to the order record the membership was purchased in.
• Do you already have existing subscriptions? If yes, do they include the product that grants access to the membership as a line item? If so, you can use “Grant Access” to create your memberships, as both orders and subscriptions assigned to users are checked.

You can read more about how the “Grant access” action works in our user memberships document.

Requirements for import

In order to bulk create or update user memberships, you must already have the following:

• Membership Plans: You must already create your membership plans under WooCommerce > Memberships > Membership Plans. You may want to optionally create rules and other settings for your plan, but only the plan itself needs to exist to import.
• Membership Plan IDs or slugs: You want to note the ID (post ID) or the slug for each membership plan; this will be used within the import to designate which membership plan the user will be assigned to (users can be assigned to multiple plans if desired). If you do not know how to get user or post IDs from WordPress, we recommend this tutorial.
• User identifer: When updating existing user memberships, you will need a way to identify the user you want to modify. You can use the user_membership_ID to identify an existing user and their membership plan. If you include membership_plan_ID or membership_plan_slug, you can instead use user_ID, user_name, or member_email to identify an existing member.

Formatting import CSVs

While you may be used to creating your CSVs in Microsoft Excel, we recommend against this, as Excel can add extra markup. Instead, we recommend using Google Drive / Google Sheets to create your spreadsheet, and export this as a CSV file. If you have an existing CSV, you can import it to Google Drive by creating a sheet, then going to File > Import > Upload to add your existing spreadsheet.

Once your spreadsheet has been created, you can export it by downloading as a CSV, which will let you then import into WordPress with this CSV:

 

If you would like an example to work from, you can check out our example import and export CSV files and save these to work from. You can either click File > Download as > CSV as outlined above, or right-click on a specific sheet and use “Copy to” to move this to your own Google Sheet.

If you absolutely must use Excel, the “Window Comma Separated (csv)” format should be used, not “MS-DOS Comma Separated (csv)”.

Set up your CSV with one row per user membership. If a customer / member has more than one membership, you will need a row for each membership that should be added.

Import: column names

Your column names must exactly match the column names in this list for a successful import.

*The available user membership statuses are:

** You will be able to select whether your dates and times are in UTC or in your site’s timezone while importing.

Importing members

To import members, first be sure that you have a properly formatted CSV file ready to go. If you like some examples, check out our example import and export CSV files (there are multiple sheets you can choose from at the bottom).

Navigate to WooCommerce > Memberships > Import / Export and click on the “Import from CSV” section. This will allow you to select your import options and upload your CSV file to process.

• Choose a file from your computer – Upload your properly-formatted CSV file of memberships here.
• Import Options
  • Update existing records if a matching user membership is found – Enable this if you’d like to merge or update memberships from the uploaded CSV. If enabled, when the user membership ID column matches an existing membership, that membership will be updated with your uploaded data. When this setting is disabled, rows with matching user membership IDs are skipped.
  • Allow membership transfer between users… (only shown if “Update existing records… is enabled) – If enabled, when a user membership is matched, but the user ID doesn’t match the current member, the membership will be transferred to the new user in the CSV. When disabled, rows that have mismatched user membership IDs / users will be skipped.
  • Create new user memberships if a matching user membership ID isn’t found – If enabled, when an existing user membership can’t be located from the CSV data, a new one will be created. When disabled, rows with user memberships that can’t be matched will be skipped.
  • Create a new user if no matching user is found – When enabled, if an imported row contains data that doesn’t match an existing user (user ID, username, and email are checked in order), then a new user is created and this membership is assigned to the new user. When disabled, rows without matching users are skipped.
  • Send new account notification emails when creating new users during an import – When enabled, if a new user is created, they’ll be sent the default WooCommerce “New Account” email.
• Default Start Date – When “Create new user memberships…” is enabled, this field is shown. Select a default starting date for any memberships that are created via import; this default is used when the member_since column is blank.
• Dates timezone – Select whether the member_since and membership_expiration dates in your file are in your site’s timezone or in UTC. The export default is the site timezone.
• Fields are separated by – Select the delimiter for your CSV file. Defaults to comma — only change this if you know what you’re doing.

When you’ve added your CSV file and selected your import options, you can click “Upload File and Import”. The file will be analyzed, and members will be imported or updated based on your settings. The plugin will then display a summary of the import for you.

Troubleshooting imports

• You see a “Could not find User Memberships to import from uploaded file.” error: This means your CSV is either missing required information, or is unreadable. Please check your CSV format to ensure the required information is present and all column headers are named exactly as they are in our table. If this is correct, please upload your CSV file to Google Sheets and re-download it, as its format is probably at fault.
• Your import dies in the middle of the process without importing all members: This most likely indicates that you’re importing a larger number of members than your server can handle. Please break your CSV file up and re-try the import, as you can import multiple times. First try breaking the import into half, then in half again, etc, until your import completes successfully. Typically you should be able to import a few thousand rows without issue, but this depends on your hosting environment.

If these troubleshooting steps do not help you, please submit a help request and we’d be happy to assist.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can I set passwords for members on import?
A: Setting passwords if you create new users is not possible via an import file; the new user will have a password generated by WordPress.

If you’d like to notify new users to allow them to set their password after the account has been created, please enable “Send new account notification emails when creating new users during an import”.

Q: Can I add the customer’s data like the phone number to the export file?
A: The export only currently includes data related to the user membership itself. If you wanted to add additional customer data to this export file, you would need the help of a developer to modify the export file. You could consider 2 options:

• Use the Customer / Order CSV Export as a starting point, and modify the customer export query to only include users with memberships (this would give you an export of members only with all customer data, but not membership-specific data, but this could be added).
• Modify the Memberships export file via custom code to add additional columns as needed to the member export. You can find ample filters in the /includes/utilities/class-wc-memberships-csv-export-user-memberships.php file to modify the export output as needed.

The post WooCommerce Memberships Profile Fields first appeared on CODIBU.

• import a CSV of your members to update or merge membership data
• import a CSV of members to create new memberships (and even create new user accounts if needed)
• export all members, or export members based on status, plan, start date, or expiration date
• export selected members to CSV using a bulk action

This document will show you how to import or export members using the native Memberships import and export capabilities, along with creating memberships for existing users.

If you want to export members to move them to MailChimp, check out MailChimp for Memberships, which will automatically sync your member list with a MailChimp list and keep it updated as members change status.

Developers: You may also want to check out this community plugin to add CLI support for imports, which imports via command line for large data sets, and our REST API documentation, which lets you read user membership data.

Exporting members

You may want to export members to an external service, such as an email service, to segment your newsletters by status or plan type (MailChimp users may be interested in MailChimp for Memberships instead). You may also use a member CSV to export members, make changes, then re-import / update memberships. These are possible with the native exporter.

The exporter will provide several columns, such as the user membership ID; membership plan ID, slug, and name; member email; member name; and membership start date. You can view example import and export CSV files in this Google Sheet — note that there are several sheets that you can choose from at the bottom.

A quick note: when members are exported, the member_since and membership_expiration columns will show the member start and end dates (respectively) in the site’s selected timezone. You can import these members later, just be sure to select the site timezone for the import file as well.

If you would like to export in UTC time instead, you can add this small code snippet wherever you keep custom code to change the exported time:

add_filter( 'wc_memberships_csv_export_user_memberships_dates_in_utc', '__return_true' );

To export members, go to WooCommerce > Memberships > Import / Export, and ensure you’re on the “Export to CSV” tab. Here you can configure export options to export all members or groups of members.

Combinations of these settings can be used to get a customized list of members.

• Plan – Select plans if you’d like to export only members belonging to certain plans. Leave this blank to export members of any plan.
• Status – Select membership statuses if you’d like to export only members who have certain statuses (ie only “active” and “complimentary” members). Leave this blank to export members with any status.
• Start Date – You can optionally restrict the export based on the member’s start date. Add a range to export members who signed up during that date range; you can also leave ranges open ended, such as “From ___ to 2016-05-01”, which will give you any member who signed up before May 1, 2016. Leave this blank to ignore start date in the export.
• End Date – You can optionally restrict the export based on the member’s expiration date. Add a range to export memberships that expire during that date range; you can also leave ranges open ended, such as “From ___ to 2016-05-01”, which will give you any member whose membership expired before May 1, 2016. (This would also exclude open-ended / unlimited memberships!) Leave this blank to ignore expiration date in the export.
• Meta Data – Enable this to include all meta data for a membership, such as paused date, or data added by other plugins
• Separate fields by – Changes the CSV delimiter, and defaults to comma; only change this if you know what you’re doing.

Click “Export” to generate your CSV file. Note that you must keep your browser window open until the export completes; closing the browser window will abort the export.

Bulk exporting members

You can also export a selected group of members from the “Members” list. Click the checkmarks next to the desired members, then select the “Export to CSV” bulk action. When you click “Apply”, a CSV export of the selected members is generated.

Troubleshooting exports

• If your CSV file isn’t generated, please double-check any export options you’ve set. You may be using option to limit the member list that do not correspond to any memberships on your site.

If these troubleshooting steps do not help you, please submit a help request and we’d be happy to assist.

Import via grant access action

Before you decide that you need to import members, you should consider using the “Grant access” action for your plans to programmatically create memberships. Here’s a good set of questions to ask yourself before determining whether you should use this or an import:

• Do you already have existing orders for purchases of your membership product? Use “Grant access” — this will create new memberships and tie them to the order record the membership was purchased in.
• Do you already have existing subscriptions? If yes, do they include the product that grants access to the membership as a line item? If so, you can use “Grant Access” to create your memberships, as both orders and subscriptions assigned to users are checked.

You can read more about how the “Grant access” action works in our user memberships document.

Requirements for import

In order to bulk create or update user memberships, you must already have the following:

• Membership Plans: You must already create your membership plans under WooCommerce > Memberships > Membership Plans. You may want to optionally create rules and other settings for your plan, but only the plan itself needs to exist to import.
• Membership Plan IDs or slugs: You want to note the ID (post ID) or the slug for each membership plan; this will be used within the import to designate which membership plan the user will be assigned to (users can be assigned to multiple plans if desired). If you do not know how to get user or post IDs from WordPress, we recommend this tutorial.
• User identifer: When updating existing user memberships, you will need a way to identify the user you want to modify. You can use the user_membership_ID to identify an existing user and their membership plan. If you include membership_plan_ID or membership_plan_slug, you can instead use user_ID, user_name, or member_email to identify an existing member.

Formatting import CSVs

While you may be used to creating your CSVs in Microsoft Excel, we recommend against this, as Excel can add extra markup. Instead, we recommend using Google Drive / Google Sheets to create your spreadsheet, and export this as a CSV file. If you have an existing CSV, you can import it to Google Drive by creating a sheet, then going to File > Import > Upload to add your existing spreadsheet.

Once your spreadsheet has been created, you can export it by downloading as a CSV, which will let you then import into WordPress with this CSV:

If you would like an example to work from, you can check out our example import and export CSV files and save these to work from. You can either click File > Download as > CSV as outlined above, or right-click on a specific sheet and use “Copy to” to move this to your own Google Sheet.

If you absolutely must use Excel, the “Window Comma Separated (csv)” format should be used, not “MS-DOS Comma Separated (csv)”.

Set up your CSV with one row per user membership. If a customer / member has more than one membership, you will need a row for each membership that should be added.

Import: column names

Your column names must exactly match the column names in this list for a successful import.

*The available user membership statuses are:

** You will be able to select whether your dates and times are in UTC or in your site’s timezone while importing.

Importing members

To import members, first be sure that you have a properly formatted CSV file ready to go. If you like some examples, check out our example import and export CSV files (there are multiple sheets you can choose from at the bottom).

Navigate to WooCommerce > Memberships > Import / Export and click on the “Import from CSV” section. This will allow you to select your import options and upload your CSV file to process.

• Choose a file from your computer – Upload your properly-formatted CSV file of memberships here.
• Import Options
  • Update existing records if a matching user membership is found – Enable this if you’d like to merge or update memberships from the uploaded CSV. If enabled, when the user membership ID column matches an existing membership, that membership will be updated with your uploaded data. When this setting is disabled, rows with matching user membership IDs are skipped.
  • Allow membership transfer between users… (only shown if “Update existing records… is enabled) – If enabled, when a user membership is matched, but the user ID doesn’t match the current member, the membership will be transferred to the new user in the CSV. When disabled, rows that have mismatched user membership IDs / users will be skipped.
  • Create new user memberships if a matching user membership ID isn’t found – If enabled, when an existing user membership can’t be located from the CSV data, a new one will be created. When disabled, rows with user memberships that can’t be matched will be skipped.
  • Create a new user if no matching user is found – When enabled, if an imported row contains data that doesn’t match an existing user (user ID, username, and email are checked in order), then a new user is created and this membership is assigned to the new user. When disabled, rows without matching users are skipped.
  • Send new account notification emails when creating new users during an import – When enabled, if a new user is created, they’ll be sent the default WooCommerce “New Account” email.
• Default Start Date – When “Create new user memberships…” is enabled, this field is shown. Select a default starting date for any memberships that are created via import; this default is used when the member_since column is blank.
• Dates timezone – Select whether the member_since and membership_expiration dates in your file are in your site’s timezone or in UTC. The export default is the site timezone.
• Fields are separated by – Select the delimiter for your CSV file. Defaults to comma — only change this if you know what you’re doing.

When you’ve added your CSV file and selected your import options, you can click “Upload File and Import”. The file will be analyzed, and members will be imported or updated based on your settings. The plugin will then display a summary of the import for you.

Troubleshooting imports

• You see a “Could not find User Memberships to import from uploaded file.” error: This means your CSV is either missing required information, or is unreadable. Please check your CSV format to ensure the required information is present and all column headers are named exactly as they are in our table. If this is correct, please upload your CSV file to Google Sheets and re-download it, as its format is probably at fault.
• Your import dies in the middle of the process without importing all members: This most likely indicates that you’re importing a larger number of members than your server can handle. Please break your CSV file up and re-try the import, as you can import multiple times. First try breaking the import into half, then in half again, etc, until your import completes successfully. Typically you should be able to import a few thousand rows without issue, but this depends on your hosting environment.

If these troubleshooting steps do not help you, please submit a help request and we’d be happy to assist.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can I set passwords for members on import?
A: Setting passwords if you create new users is not possible via an import file; the new user will have a password generated by WordPress.

If you’d like to notify new users to allow them to set their password after the account has been created, please enable “Send new account notification emails when creating new users during an import”.

Q: Can I add the customer’s data like the phone number to the export file?
A: The export only currently includes data related to the user membership itself. If you wanted to add additional customer data to this export file, you would need the help of a developer to modify the export file. You could consider 2 options:

• Use the Customer / Order CSV Export as a starting point, and modify the customer export query to only include users with memberships (this would give you an export of members only with all customer data, but not membership-specific data, but this could be added).
• Modify the Memberships export file via custom code to add additional columns as needed to the member export. You can find ample filters in the /includes/utilities/class-wc-memberships-csv-export-user-memberships.php file to modify the export output as needed.

The post WooCommerce Memberships Import and Export first appeared on CODIBU.

Note that if no rules are applied to content, that content is publicly accessible. Once a rule has been applied to content, that content is restricted, and only accessible to memberships that grant access to that content.

Rules hierarchy: which rules override others

There are situations in which restriction rules could overlap. For example, you could have a restriction set that members can access the “Coffee” category of posts, but only after 1 week has passed. All posts in this category will now abide by this rule.

However, if you also create a rule for the “Moka Latte” post in the “Coffee” category, you could say that this post is restricted, but accessible immediately. This introduces a conflict, as both of these rules apply to the same content.

When this occurs, Memberships always defers to the more specific rule. In this case, the post will be accessible immediately, because a rule for the post is more specific than a rule for the entire category.

Here are the basic rules that Memberships follows:

• Rules that restrict an entire content type, such as all blog posts, are put into effect first.
• They can be overridden by more specific rules. You can restrict all blog posts, but then set rules for categories or single posts.
• A rule for blog post categories or tags (taxonomies) will override a rule for all posts, as it is more specific.
• A rule for a single blog post or group of posts will override both rules for an entire content type and for a taxonomy, as this rule is most specific.
• If two rules are of equal specificity, the rule that grants access first will be followed *.

*Example: If a post is in both the “Marvel Superheroes” and “Avengers” categories, rules could be applied to both of these categories that conflict. If “Marvel Superheroes” is accessible after two weeks, and “Avengers” is accessible after one week, the post will be accessible in one week. The earlier access rule will always be used.

This can help you expedite setup, as you may want to delay access to a category, but provide access to one or two posts immediately.

Membership plan page

Restricting content while creating or editing a membership plan provides the most control over content restriction. While editing a plan, you can restrict all pages, posts, categories, or other types of content easily.

You can also create specific restriction rules for individual posts, pages, or taxonomies (such as categories), and determine when members should get access to this content (immediately or after a certain time has passed).

You can learn more about creating plans in the Membership Plans document.

Product restriction

Product restriction is unique because either viewing or purchasing restrictions can be used. Products can be restricted from the plan page as described above, but they can also be restricted while editing the product.

Because products can both grant access to memberships, as well as be restricted by memberships, the product meta box is slightly different from the default Memberships meta box.

To restrict a product while editing it, view the “Memberships” box, and go to “Restrict Content”.

You can create a rule here that will restrict this product to the selected plan, just as if it were added from the plan page.

Note that if you already have restrictions in place that affect more products (i.e., a category-level restriction that affects this product), you cannot edit it from here and must edit it from the plan page.

Content restriction

The Memberships restriction meta box will be added to your pages, posts, and other content while Memberships is active. This will allow you to add membership restriction rules on the fly as you edit or create content.

To restrict a page or post while it’s being edited, simply add a rule to restrict the content to a particular membership plan.

You can also use custom restriction messages if you’d like to tailor the restriction notice to this content. If enabled, this will override the default / global restriction message set under WooCommerce > Settings > Memberships > Messages.

Making content public

If you’ve restricted content, you can still make it public (version 1.1+). While viewing your post, page, product etc., you can disable restrictions. This overrides any and all rules that apply to the content, making it publicly accessible for everyone. This can be done from the “Memberships” meta box while creating or editing the content.

This is an easy way to make teaser content public. For example, you could restrict all posts with a single rule, and then use the “Disable restrictions” option to make some public as a teaser for your membership.

If you have public content with restrictions disabled on your site, this will be listed on the membership plan page for reference.

Restrict content with Memberships Gutenberg blocks

In Memberships 1.15+, you can use Memberships blocks in the Gutenberg editor to easily restrict content to members and non-members.

• The Member Content block restricts content to plan members. You can specify which plan(s) a user must belong to in order to see the content, as well as determine when this content should be visible.
• The Non-Member Content block restricts content to visitors and other non-members. You can specify certain plans that a user must not belong to in order to see the content.

Using Member Content blocks

Follow the steps below to setup a Member Content block for a page or post:

1. 1. Click Add Block and select the Member Content block.
   2. In the Block settings panel, you’ll see the following options:
      • • Membership plans: Specify one or more plans that a user must belong to in order to see the restricted content. If left blank, members of any plan can see this content.

      

      • • Delay access: Determine when members can see this content – immediately, after they’ve been a plan member for a certain length of time, or after a specific date. If you’re using WooCommerce Subscriptions, you can also hide this block until after the free trial period.

      

      • • Restricted content message: Decide what users who do not have access to this block should see instead of the restricted content. By default, the block will be invisible to those without proper access, but you can also use your default restriction message or create a custom message.

      

   3. You can add text or insert other blocks inside the Member Content block. All content within the block will be restricted based on your block settings.

1. When you’re satisfied with your page or post, click Publish. You can visit the site to see how it will appear to members, or visit the page in an Incognito window to see how it will appear to non-members.

Using Non-Member Content blocks

Follow the steps below to setup a Non-Member Content block for a page or post:

1. 1. Click Add Block and select the Non-Member Content block.
   2. In the Block settings panel, you’ll see the following options:
      • • Membership plans: Specify one or more plans that a user must notbelong to in order to see the restricted content. If left blank, users who don’t belong to any plan can see this content.

      

   3. You can add text or insert other blocks inside the Non-Member Content block. All content within the block will be restricted based on your block settings.

1. When you’re satisfied with your page or post, click Publish. You can visit the site to see how it will appear to members, or visit the page in an Incognito window to see how it will appear to non-members.

Restriction shortcode

The [wcm_restrict] shortcode provides an easy way to restrict blocks of content within a page or post. This is most useful when you don’t want to restrict an entire page or post, but portions of the content should only be visible to members, such as tutorial videos or infographics. This will not show a restriction message, so you can use the non-member shortcode if you’d like to add a restriction message.

There are three accepted attributes, but they are all optional:

• plans: the plan slugs or IDs to limit the wrapped content to certain members
• delay: delays access to the wrapped content by a certain time, or makes it available on a particular date
• start_after_trial: delays access to the wrapped content until a trial period is over (when WooCommerce Subscriptions is in use)

Wrapping the content in this shortcode will hide it unless the member is logged in and has the appropriate access. Here are some ways this shortcode can be used:

Restrict content to members only

When used it its most general form, this shortcode will restrict content to any member on your site, regardless of which membership plan the member has. The general format is: [wcm_restrict]Restricted Content[/wcm_restrict]

This is public content.

[wcm_restrict]
This content is only visible to members, regardless of which membership the member has.
[/wcm_restrict]

This content is now public again.

Restrict content to specific members

The shortcode can also accept an attribute to limit the content to specific members. We can add the “plans” argument to restrict this content even further to certain members: [wcm_restrict plans="gold, platinum"]Restricted Content[/wcm_restrict]

You must use the appropriate slugs for your membership plans, which can be viewed from the plans list or by editing the plan.

You can use the plan ID instead of the slug if preferred (which is the same as the WordPress post ID).

This is public content.

[wcm_restrict plans="gold, platinum"]
This content is only visible to gold or platinum members. Members with other plans or non-members cannot see this.
[/wcm_restrict]

This content is now public again.

Delay restricted content access

There are two ways to delay the access members have to content wrapped in the shortcode:

• delay access for a length of time (e.g., 2 weeks)
• delay access until a certain date (e.g., January 1, 2016)

Delaying access for a length of time can accept any time for the delay argument, such as: “3 days”, “2 weeks”, “1 month”, or “2 years”

[wcm_restrict delay="2 weeks"]
This content will be available to members of any plan once they've been a member for two weeks.
[/wcm_restrict]

Delaying until a date can accept several date formats, but we recommend using the ISO standard (yyyy-mm-dd). For example, you can use: “January 1, 2016” or “2016-01-01”

[wcm_restrict delay="2016-01-01"]
This content will be available to members of any plan on January 1, 2016.
[/wcm_restrict]

NOTE: If you use a time, such as “May 1” with no year, be aware that this access may reset each year. For example, this content will be available May 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015, then access will reset and the content is inaccessible again from January 1, 2016 to May 1, 2016. Please ensure that you include a year to be specific about the access date.

You can also delay access based on trial status.

[wcm_restrict start_after_trial="yes"]
This content will be available to all members except those in a free trial from a subscription. They will have access when the free trial ends and the membership moves from "Free Trial" to "Active" status.
[/wcm_restrict]

Using all shortcode attributes

Any or all attributes can be used at a given time to control content access and access delay. For example, you can use all three attributes to restrict access to particular members at a certain time:

[wcm_restrict plans="gold, silver" delay="1 week" start_after_trial="yes"]
This content is available to any silver or gold member one week after the trial period ends. If the membership doesn't have a trial period, access is simply delayed 1 week.
[/wcm_restrict]

Non-member shortcode

Since shortcodes do not display restriction notices, you may want to give your non-members a notice to log in or purchase a membership. You can do so with the [wcm_nonmember] shortcode, which displays portions of content only to non-members. Non-members are guest users or customers who are logged in, but do not have a membership.

The general format is: [wcm_nonmember]Non-member Content[/wcm_nonmember]

This is content everyone sees!

[wcm_nonmember]
Whoops, this video is for members only. If you have a membership, please log in. If not, you can definitely get access! <a href="/membership/">Purchase a membership here</a>.
[/wcm_nonmember]

[wcm_restrict]
Embedded video displayed to members only.
[/wcm_restrict]

Now we're talking to everyone again.

Specifying plans

(Version 1.9+) The non-member shortcode can specific plans if you want to alter its behavior slightly. If you add a “plans” attribute, this will no longer only target non-members; rather, it will target all visitors who are not active members of the specified plan(s).

An example:

[wcm_restrict plans="gold"]
Content only shown to gold members
[/wcm_restrict]

[wcm_nonmember plans="gold"]
Content shown to anyone who is not a gold member, even other members
[/wcm_nonmember]

You can enter a list of one or more plans in this shortcode:

[wcm_nonmember plans="gold, silver"]
This is shown to anyone who does not have a silver OR gold membership active.
[/wcm_nonmember]

Upgrade prompts

When paired with [wcm_restrict] to target certain plans, you can dynamically display content appropriate to the member’s level. Remember, if a member has multiple memberships, they may see multiple messages.

Here’s an example of building a page that shows content only to certain members:

[wcm_nonmember]
Hey there! You've stumbled onto a members-only video :). If you'd like to check out this video, please purchase a Platinum Membership.
[/wcm_nonmember]

[wcm_restrict plans="silver, gold"]
Hey Member! Thanks for checking this page out -- however, it's restricted to Platinum-level members only. If you'd like to access it, please purchase to a Platinum Membership.
[/wcm_restrict]

[wcm_restrict plans="platinum"]
The super secret video for platinum members goes here.
[/wcm_restrict]

The post WooCommerce Memberships Restrict Content first appeared on CODIBU.

Memberships are activated once an order is paid for (processing or completed status) that includes a product that grants access to the membership. They can also be activated manually by a shop administrator.

If a membership is tied to a subscription, then it’s tied into all subscription actions as well:

• If the subscription is active, the membership is active and will not expire — it stays active so long as the subscription is.
• If the subscription is suspended, the membership is paused (which stops access to restricted content).
• If the subscription is cancelled, the membership is cancelled.

Using WooCommerce Subscriptions can allow your customers to upgrade or downgrade their memberships as well. Please see our document on the Subscriptions integration for more details.

Managing user memberships

User Memberships can be viewed from WooCommerce > Memberships > Members. This list will include each membership on your site, so if a user has more than one membership, that user will be listed multiple times.

From this list, you can edit, pause, cancel, or delete memberships by hovering on the user’s name. You can also select multiple users to perform a bulk edit. The only bulk action available is to change the membership status for the selected individuals.

If you only want to view certain memberships, you can filter memberships by:

1. Plan type (i.e., view only silver memberships)
2. Memberships status (i.e., view only expired memberships)
3. Expiration: view plans that expire today, this week, or this month

View or edit members

When you click on a member’s name or the “Edit” action, you’ll be taken to the member management screen. From here, you can edit all memberships that a user has using the tabs to switch between memberships.

Member Details will show you static information about the member: avatar, email, name, and billing address.

Recent Activity will show you recent activity for all memberships tied to this user — status changes, notes, etc. The last 5 notes will be shown, and will display which membership the activity is related to.

Membership Details will show plan details and allow you to edit them. Each membership is displayed in a tabbed layout so you can switch between a user’s memberships.

You can view or change the plan type, status, membership start date, and membership end date. The billing section will show you details on how the membership was purchased.

Membership Notes show both automatically generated member notes (such as purchase details and status changes) and manually added notes for the membership being viewed. You can read more on membership notes below.

Transfer memberships

You can transfer memberships from one user on your site to another using the membership “Transfer” action. When clicked, this will prompt you to select another user for the membership, or to create a new user for the membership.

When transferred, all membership data will stay the same (order data for which the membership was purchased, linked subscriptions, etc) and only the user who owns the membership changes.

User membership statuses

User Memberships can have one of several statuses to help you manage members and content access. Some statuses are used automatically when memberships are purchased, some are only used as the result of manual actions, and some tie into Subscriptions if a subscription grants access to the membership.

*If you’ve delayed content access until after the free trial, the member cannot access it in the trial period. Memberships let you determine which content is included in the trial period so you don’t have to provide access to some content while a subscription is in the trial state.

Members can renew a set-length membership if its status is ‘expired’ by re-purchasing the product that granted access or clicking “Renew” from My Account > Memberships:

Notes on status changes

For the most part, membership statuses are automated. For example, when a set-length membership is purchased, the “Active” status is used automatically, and the status changes to “Expire” when the membership runs out, or “Cancelled” if the member cancels the membership.

When a subscription membership is purchased, the status will be “Free trial” if a trial exists, or “Active” if no trial exists. Membership status changes will automatically change with the subscription status.

There are some actions you should be aware of that will trigger status changes.

• When an order that contained a membership product is marked refunded (the order status is changed to “Refunded”), then the membership purchased in that order will be cancelled.
• When an order is trashed that contains a membership product, the membership purchased in that order will be cancelled.
• If a subscription is cancelled or trashed that has a membership tied to it, then the membership tied to that subscription will be cancelled.
• If a subscription is suspended that has a membership tied to it, then the membership tied to that subscription will be paused.

Membership notes

Membership notes work very similar to WooCommerce order notes, and allow you to track information about, and changes to, user memberships.

Some notes are automatically generated — membership purchases and status changes will generate notes for record keeping.

You can add notes manually to track membership details (i.e., spoke with customer on June 1), or can opt to send the note to the member by clicking “Notify Member”.

These notes can help you track why changes were made (i.e., why the status was changed to “complimentary”), or give you a quick way to get in touch with a specific member.

Notes emailed to a member will have a purple background instead of the default gray to indicate they were sent to the member:

Manually creating user memberships

You can manually create a membership for a customer or any WordPress user in a few steps by going to WooCommerce > Memberships > Members.

First, click the “Add Members” button next to the “Members” title:

You can enter the name (or username) of the user for whom you’d like to add a membership. This will search for the user, and you can select the appropriate user from the list. Or, you can opt to create a new user for this membership:

Once you’ve selected the user or entered the details for the new user, click “Add Member”:

You can now edit the details of the membership, such as the plan and expiration date.

Granting access for previous purchases

If you’d like to grant access to customers who have purchased a particular product before Memberships was activated, you can do so with our previous purchase import. As an aside, if you use the Groups plugin on your site, you can also import members from Groups (please view our Groups integration document for help).

Here’s an overview of how the process works:

• Let’s assume a Silver membership is purchasable via the “Monthly Snack Box” product.
• You’d like to grant memberships to customers who purchased this “Monthly Snack Box” already before it also granted access to the membership or before the Memberships plugin was installed.
• By following this routine, Memberships will search for any processing or completed orders that contain the “Monthly Snack Box” product and grant access to this customer.
• If the customer already has access to the membership, or the purchase was a guest purchase, the order / customer is skipped.
• Any new memberships created from this process will also have expiration dates (if your membership expires) and respect dripping rules. The import date is considered day 1 of the membership, not the purchase date.

Grant Previous Purchase Access

Go to the Membership Plan you’d like to grant access to under WooCommerce > Memberships > Membership Plans. When you click on the plan to edit it, be sure that all products are already assigned to grant access to the membership. The import process will check orders for these products to grant access.

Click “Grant Access” next to “Existing purchases” to begin this workflow.

You’ll see a notice that informs you of the following:

• If this membership exists already for the customer, a new one will not be created.
• If a customer has purchased this product, but does not yet have a membership, one will be created and will use the expiration length, etc., included in the plan.
• If the membership can be purchased via a subscription, only active subscribers with this subscription will have a membership created.

Clicking “Grant access” will begin the import.

You’ll be notified of the number of imported members as soon as the import completes.

Important notes

Here are a few behaviors of which you should be aware while using this import wizard.

• When users are imported, the membership plan’s settings will be respected in terms of content access and expiration. For example, if a membership is valid for one year, and the member is imported from a previous purchase, then the membership will expire one year after the import date.
• Membership plans will not be created if the user already has access to a plan.
• Large imports: If your site is importing a large number of members from previous purchases (i.e., over 2000 users), this process may take some time to complete. You must leave your browser window open to complete this import; closing the window will halt its progress.

The post WooCommerce Memberships User Memberships first appeared on CODIBU.

If you’d like to index some of your protected content for SEO, you can do so with excerpts enabled; you should use “Hide content only” or “Redirect to page” as your restriction mode to do so (we recommend using “Hide content only”).

Restriction modes

When setting up Memberships, you’ll first need to understand the restriction modes available to hide your content from non-members. Members will see content in its entirety if they have access, but non-members can see a few different things depending on these settings.

Hide completely

If you choose to hide content completely from non-members, it will be completely hidden until a membership is purchased or the member with access logs in. This means that restricted blog posts, products, or other content will not be accessible on your site at all and trying to access restricted content will lead to a 404 page.

Restricted posts or other content will not show up in archives, such as your shop or blog archive. If a non-member tries to visit the URL for restricted content, a 404 page will be displayed.

Comments on restricted content are hidden as well since the content cannot be accessed.

As a result, search engines cannot index restricted content. This mode should be used if you want membership content to be completely private.

Hide content only

Hiding content only will restrict content and comments unless a member has access. It differs from hiding completely because restricted content will appear in archives and on your site (such as your blog or shop page).

If content is hidden, restricted pages, posts, and content can be accessed, but none of the content will be displayed. Instead, a restriction notice is shown (only the title and featured image are available).

This is helpful if you want to “tease” restricted content in order to sell your memberships, as non-members can see that this content exists, but cannot access it and will encounter a restriction notice if they try to view the content.

“Hide content only” allows you to optionally show excerpts of content, which will display excerpts to both visitors and search engines.

 Free add-on available! Easily adjust the excerpt length with this add-on so you can control the amount of preview content available to non-members.

You should be aware of how products are treated when content is hidden. In the shop pages, products will be shown, but only the title (and optionally, the short description), will be included — no descriptions or images will be shown.

You can use the “Hide restricted products” setting within the Products settings to avoid this, which will remove restricted products from shop pages. They will still be accessible directly, and will show the content restricted message unless the member has access. The product page looks the same whether the product is hidden from the shop or not:

Redirect to page

Redirecting customers to a page behaves similarly to hiding content only, as content will be included in archives with the title and featured image. This means that restricted blog posts and products will show in your blog or shop, and excerpts can optionally be shown.

However, if the customer tries to access this content (i.e., tries to view the post or product), the customer is redirected to a page that displays the appropriate restriction notice. The customer will also be redirected from archive pages for the restricted term (such as the archive page for a restricted category), not just the individual posts or pages assigned to that term.

The content restricted page should contain the [wcm_content_restricted] shortcode by default. This is a “smart” shortcode that will have the referring source passed in — this means that the shortcode knows where the visitor came from so it can dynamically display the correct restriction message (i.e., one for products or one for content).

You can opt to customize this page or use a generic landing page instead by removing this shortcode or by customizing it with a developer.

General settings

General settings are located on the WooCommerce > Settings > Memberships page under the “General” section.

• Content Restriction Mode – The selected restriction mode determines what happens when a non-member views restricted content.
• Redirect Page – Shown when the Content Restriction Mode is set to “Redirect to page”. Select the page where non-members should be redirected when they try to access restricted content. Defaults to a “Content restricted” page created by Memberships.
• Show Excerpts – Shown when the Content Restriction Mode is not set to “Hide completely”. Select if you want to display excerpts of restricted content for non-members and search engines. By default, excerpts will include the first 55 words of the restricted content, but this length can be changed with a snippet. You can also enter a custom excerpt from within the page or post editor.
• Inherit Parent Restrictions – Select if the restriction rules applied to the “parent” should also apply to its “children” for hierarchical post types, such as pages.
• Redirect members upon login – Select where you want to redirect your members to when they log into your site.
• Login redirect page – Shown when Redirect members upon login is set to “Site page”. Select the page where members should be directed to when they log into your site. If this page is restriced from the member’s plan that is logging in, they will not be redirected.
• Account Erasure Requests – Select if you want to automatically delete memberships when a personal data erasure request is processed. See Memberships Privacy & GDPR for more details.

Groups integration

This settings area will only be shown if the Groups plugin is active on the site. Click Import Members from Groups to bring you to the Groups import workflow where you can import Groups members to Memberships.

Please see the Groups Integration documentation for more details.

Product settings

Product settings are located under WooCommerce > Settings > Memberships, under the “Products” section.

• Apply discounts when purchasing membership – Enable this setting to apply eligible discounts when customers are purchasing the membership product.
• Allow cumulative purchases – Enable this if, should customers purchase multiple products that grant access to a membership plan within the same order, you want to extend the membership length. If disabled, only “one” membership length will be granted per order, regardless of how many products in the order grant access to the plan.
• Discounts apply to subscriptions sign up fees – (Shown if Subscriptions is active) Enable this to apply member discounts to both the subscription sign up fee and the recurring price. If disabled, member discounts will only apply to the recurring price.
• Exclude products on sale from member discounts – Enable this if member discounts should not apply to products on sale.
• Hide restricted products – Enable this setting to remove products with viewing restricted from the shop catalog — applies to restriction modes of “Hide content only” and “Redirect to page”, as “Hide completely” already removes products from the catalog. Products will still be accessible directly.

Messages settings

The messages settings let you control the “content restricted” notices shown to non-members when visiting your site. These messages can adjust based on whether a purchase can grant access or not, along with what kind of content is being viewed.

Restriction messages can accept a limited number of merge tags to dynamically insert content:

• {products} inserts the product(s) needed to gain access.
• {date} inserts date a member will gain access if access has been delayed.
• {login_url} inserts the URL to my account page with the login form. If used, the member will be redirected back to the page this link was clicked from after logging in.
• {login} (or {Login}) inserts a full login link with the anchor text “log in”: Log in. If used, the member will be redirected back to the page this link was clicked from after logging in.

Blog restriction messages

• Post Restricted (Purchase Required) – The message displayed when a blog post is restricted and a membership purchase is required to gain access.
• Post Restricted (Membership Required) – The message displayed if a blog post is restricted, but is restricted to a membership that cannot be purchased (members can only be added by a shop admin).
• Post Delayed (Members) – The message displayed to a member when the member will have access to the post in the future, but not yet.

Page restriction messages

• Page Restricted (Purchase Required) – The message displayed when a page is restricted and a membership purchase is required to gain access.
• Page Restricted (Membership Required) – The message displayed if a page is restricted, but is restricted to a membership that cannot be purchased (members can only be added by a shop admin).
• Page Delayed (Members) – The message displayed to a member when the member will have access to the page in the future, but not yet.

Content restriction messages

These messages are shown for restricted content that is neither a blog post or page, such as content created by other plugins (or other custom post types).

• Content Restricted (Purchase Required) – The message displayed when content is restricted and a membership purchase is required to gain access.
• Content Restricted (Membership Required) – The message displayed if content is restricted, but is restricted to a membership that cannot be purchased (members can only be added by a shop admin).
• Content Delayed (Members) – The message displayed to a member when the member will have access to the content in the future, but not yet.

Product restriction messages

• Product Viewing or Purchasing Delayed – The message displayed when the member will have access to the product in the future, but not yet.
• Product Viewing Restricted (Purchase Required) – The message displayed when the product can’t be viewed / accessed and a membership purchase is required to gain access.
• Product Viewing Restricted (Membership Required) – The message displayed if the product viewing is restricted, but is restricted to a membership that cannot be purchased (members can only be added by a shop admin).
• Product Buying Restricted (Purchase Required) – The message displayed when the product be viewed but not purchased, and a membership purchase is required to gain access.
• Product Buying Restricted (Membership Required) – The message displayed if the purchasing the product is restricted, but is restricted to a membership that cannot be purchased (members can only be added by a shop admin).

Discount messages

• Product Discounted (Purchase Required) – Enter a message if you’d like to enable discount messages. This message will be displayed on the product page to non-members or guests if the product is discounted for a membership that can be purchased. Leave blank to disable the message.
• Product Discounted (Membership Required) – Enter a message if you’d like to enable discount messages. This message will be displayed on the product page to non-members or guests if the product is discounted for a membership that cannot be purchased. Leave blank to disable the message.
  

• Member Discount Login Reminder – Select when and where to display a login notice for members: never, on the cart page, at checkout, or both. This notice will only display to remind members to log in if a product in the cart has a member discount.
  

  

• Member Discount Login Message – Change the text of the discount login notice. Leave blank to use the default text, which will adjust based on the number of discounted items in the cart.

Shipping settings

Memberships can allow you to offer free shipping exclusively to your members. This can be done by adjusting the free shipping rate settings.

If you’d like to offer a free shipping method only to your members, you can choose that free shipping requires an active membership in the shipping method settings. You can then determine which members are offered this rate.

You can add one or more member-specific shipping rates. Non-members and guests will not be offered this rate in the cart and checkout; this rate is only offered to logged-in members.

If you’d like to also offer free shipping to non-members and guests, you can still do so with regular free shipping rates. If you do add a non-member rate, we recommend adding your members who will get their own free shipping as “disallowed”. This way, members do not see more than one available free shipping rate at a time.

In this way, you can offer specific free shipping to both members and some guests in your store.

Email settings

Memberships adds five new emails under WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.

• Membership note – Sent to members when a member-facing note has been added to a membership (not sent for private/default notes).
• Membership ending soon – Sent to members 1 to 60 days before a membership ends.
• Membership ended – Sent to members when their membership expires.
• Membership renewal reminder – Sent to members 1 to 60 days after a membership ends to ask for renewal. This email is only sent for memberships that are accessed via product purchase, since other membership types can’t be renewed.
• Membership activated – Sent to members when a delayed membership is activated.

For Ending soon and Renewal reminder emails, you can also reschedule all emails if you want to adjust sending times. Clicking the “Reschedule” action after saving your settings will allow you to adjust email schedules for all existing memberships (without this action, settings changes only apply to new memberships moving forward).

Content can be customized on a per-plan basis for ending soon, ended, and renewal reminder emails to respond to whether the plan can be renewed, can upsell other plans, etc.

For example, if a registration-based membership ends, this cannot be renewed, but you may want to upsell a “full” or paid membership. The “Membership ended” email provides an opportunity to do so:

Endpoint settings

Under WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced, you’ll find the endpoint settings for your store’s account section. Memberships adds a “My Membership” endpoint for the Members’ Area, which displays accessible content, etc, to the member.

If you’d like to disable access to the members’ area, you can delete this endpoint, and the “Memberships” item will not appear in the account navigation.

This setting will default to members-area for the endpoint, which means the URL for the Member Area will look something like this:

http://mysite.com/my-account/members-area/1008/my-membership-content/

Where 1008 is the ID of the membership plan for which the member is viewing accessible content / products / etc, and the “my-membership-content” will adjust based on which section is viewed.

The post WooCommerce Memberships Settings first appeared on CODIBU.