Now Restricting WordPress Content is Easy with ARMember!

Did you know it takes roughly 1-2 hours to research content and draw an outline and another 2-4 hours to write it/produce it. When you add in the hours of review and revisions, a single piece of content can take up to 5-12 hours to reach its final draft.

I know you have been running your membership website on WordPress or have a plan to launch a content based Website. You make a lot of efforts to come up with content on a regular basis and invest enough time. However, you are not sure how to restrict it and start monetizing it like those major magazine subscription websites.

An answer to your question is, learn to restrict WordPress content. With premium content restriction tools available as plugins, you can set access layers for your content and define what logged in users, non logged-in users, subscribed users, product users, can see on your Website.

Don’t worry, it’s not as tough as it might seem. And not even costly! In this blog, I shall guide you through a free version and paid version of a plugin to set up content access rules. There’s a bonus waiting for you as well!

Understand the Meaning of Content Restriction

While surfing through Disney+, you can view what the platform offers, maybe even access some of the content and watch trailers. What next? You need to subscribe to the platform to watch other premium content and full movies. News Portals like The Athletic gives you an access to half the article and to continue reading, you need to subscribe.

A similar type of content access rule can be laid down on your Website. There are free tools like Miniorange giving you the feature of easy content restriction on WordPress. You can define whether you want to restrict a page, post, or a video and for whom you want it to be restricted. However, I suggest opting for a membership Website. It gives you a lot of other related features that would make your content game even stronger.

How Can a WordPress Membership Website aid Content Access Rules

In a membership based website, you are bound to create different levels of memberships. Now, you can restrict content based on the membership level and even launch members-only content. You will not have to set a new restriction every time you create a post and just choose a membership level while doing so. Let us look at the benefits of using a membership based website for restricting content.

• Multiple Levels: Set up plans like free, trial, premium memberships, and even have different levels under premium (Gold, Silver, Bronze). You can have different charges for each version and monetize your membership website.
• Control Content Access: With different membership levels, you can plan different content for each. You can define what the free membership users would see and what premium membership users can access.
• Offer Prorated Membership Option: You can offer an option to members to upgrade or downgrade their membership level at any time. This keeps the user satisfaction intact and the payment can be prorated.
• Renewable Memberships: You can even set up recurring or renewable membership subscriptions. In this way, a set of premium members who enjoy your content would keep renewing their membership, thus, a stable income flow for you.
• A Member Community: You can create an exclusive members-only community to give them a space to interact. Use a feature of social community to have your in-built social media limited to members.
• Earn with Pay Per Post: With a membership Website, you can sell a single post or a single piece of content. Instead of applying content access rules, you can make premium content and sell it individually.

These are just a few of the features that come with setting up a membership website using ARMember. There are many other options like offering free trial, paid trial, coupon codes, group membership, multiple payment gateways, google recaptcha, add gaming features and reward points, sell online courses and lessons, and a lot more!

Let us learn easy content restriction on WordPress with ARMember. And power up your membership Website.

Content Access Rules with ARMember Lite Version (Free Membership Plugin)

Once you are ready with the ARMember setup Wizard and have launched your membership plans, you are ready to set up content access rules. Let us go step-by-step.

Step-1: Installing the ARMember Lite Plugin

On installing the ARMember Lite Plugin, you will see a list of features that come with ARMember Lite on the left hand side panel. Content Access Rules is one of them. Click on it.

Step-2 Check the Content Access Rules page

On the Content Access Rules page, you will see a note that says that by default, all the content is accessible to everyone. Further, you will see some filter selection drop downs on top of the page.

• The first drop down is to select the type of content that you want to restrict.
• Next is the option to Turn on/off the default restriction. Your selection of on or off decides whether that particular type of content is visible to any specific plan members or not.
• The last option is to select the plan for which you want to apply this rule.

Step-3 Set the Access Rule

Below these filters, you will find a list of all the pages or posts as per your topmost selection. Now, you can use the radio button to turn on or turn off restrictions for individual pages.

Further, you can also select which plan members you want to allow the access of that particular page or post. In this example, I have selected the ‘Learning Content Access’ page to be visible only to Diamond Plan members and the free membership plan users will not be able to access it. 

Do not forget to click on the button of UPDATE RULES once you set the rule.

Step-4 Checking the front-end for application of the rule

Now, it is important to see whether your Content Access Rules are applied or not. Go to the front-end of your membership site and log in as a premium plan member and a free plan member, based on the restriction rules set by you.

For my example, I logged in as a Diamond Plan user and a Free Membership User. As per the Rules set, the post is visible for Diamond Plan and not accessible for free plan members.

Isn’t it easy to manage membership site access on WordPress using the ARMember Lite version? Without spending a single penny, your Website can protect your premium content. You will be a pro membership Website by providing membership level wise content access!

Restrict Content for Memberships using the ARMember Pro

Similar to the Lite version, when you purchase the ARMember Pro version, you will see the option of Content Access Rules on the left side menu. This feature works almost similarly for both the versions wherein you can set filters and then individually restrict posts and select the plans for which it will be accessible.

Here, I have set a rule for a post ‘Using Content Access Rule’ and allowed its access to Platinum Plan only, excluding the Gold and Free Plan. 

Remember to click on UPDATE RULES button!

(Yeah, I’m shouting coz I forgot it twice 🤦‍♀️)

Similar to our previous step, you can check the rule applicability from the front end by logging in as different plan users.

Now, what is the difference between using this feature on the lite version and pro version? Let us explore that.

Additional Feature for Access Rules in ARMember Pro

With the Pro Membership Plugin, you can restrict partial content using Content Access Rules. Intrigued, right? This can help you show a part of your content and to access it fully, the user has to purchase a premium plan. Follow these steps to set it up.

• Go to the page on which you want to set partial content restriction and edit the page
• Now choose which plan members will see the full content and which ones would see just a bit.
• In my example, I am setting the whole post access to Platinum Plan Members and for the Gold Plan Members, only the first paragraph will be visible.
• Thus, after the first paragraph, click on plus icon and select the option of ‘Membership Restriction Short Code’ as shown below in the image. You might have to search it in the search box.

• On adding the shortcode, the following dialogue box would appear. There are two options here in content restriction type, 1) Hide Content Only For and 2) Show Content Only For. Based on the type you select, you will choose the target users from the second option. Herein, I am choosing Show Content Only For Platinum Users. You can also choose multiple target users. Click on the button to add short code.

• Now, between the shortcode, paste the content that you only want to show for fixed users or hide for fixed users. Update the page

• Well, Before you check the front-end, it is important to go back to the page of Content Access Rules. Earlier, the Premium Page was only visible to Diamond Plan Members. Now, we want to make it partially visible to Gold Plan Members as well. We have set the shortcode for partial content, however, we also need to turn on the access for Gold Members. Thus, go to the access rules page and allow access of the selected page to gold members also as per my example here.

• Now it’s time to check the front-end for application of this rule.

Bonus Feature: Access Drip Content with ARMember Pro

With ARMember pro, you get a bonus feature of Drip Content Restriction. You can manage membership site access on WordPress using Drip Feature. This allows you to schedule content step-by-step, in pieces instead of making everything available in one go. This feature helps you keep your content safe and release it like episodes so that members keep logging back again to receive fresh content.

This is an in-built add-on for ARMember Pro which you need to activate and configure from the add-ons list. Once it is active, you can set the drip rule for any membership plans and even select which plan members will be able to access newly released content and when. You can explore more about drip content feature here.

Let’s Conclude!

It’s very important to restrict your valuable content just like you secure jewels. This content created by you is a source of earning for you by making it exclusively available for paying members-only. If you are confident in what you create, do not hesitate to put it behind a paywall. You can use features like restricting partial content or custom content drip to show a snippet of your offering and attract other non-logged in users. Take help of solid membership plugins like ARMember to have more functions and features to work with.

FAQs for Using Content Access

1) How do I change Content Access Rules?

2) Can I reset the rules midway?

3) What’s the Difference between Drip Content and Content Access Rules?