A Typical Member Registration Flow
The member registration flow is the same for signing up for any type of membership except the free one (if you want to allow free membership). The registration process for the “Free Membership” is slightly different because this one doesn’t have any payment involved.
The basic member registration flow is similar to the following:
- Visitor lands on your site.
- Want to become a member after seeing some of the awesome content.
- Follows the “Register” or “Join Today” link.
- The above mentioned links will take them to the “Membership Payment” Page. It may look similar to the one here.
- From this page they can decide which membership option they want to choose (eg. Free, Silver, Gold or whatever you are offering)
- If they choose the “Free Membership” then they just follow the link and sign up for a free membership. Remember, the free membership sign up is only possible if you (the admin) allow free membership on your site.
- If they choose a “Paid Membership” then they make a payment by clicking on the payment button for the appropriate membership.
- Once the Payment is confirmed (at this point the plugin knows what type of membership this member wants), the plugin will create the appropriate membership account for this visitor.
- The member will receive an email that contains a “unique” link to complete the registration.
- When the member clicks on that link in the email it will let them choose a “username” and “password” and complete the registration. At this point the member can log into the site.
Step 9 and 10 are additional steps that allows the member to choose their own “username” and “password”. Many membership plugin just randomly creates a “username” and “password” for the member and completes the process at step 8. From my experience I know what most people do not like to receive random “username” and “password” assigned to them so in WP eMember I made sure the members can choose the login credentials.
Hi can I manually add in members, assigning them user name and password without them activating from the email link?
Yes, you can create a member through the Admin dashboard and give the user their username and password (no activation is necessary when this path is followed).
If it is a paid membership, what would be and effective way to handle recurring billing?
You can handle this with a subscription payment button:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/how-to-add-a-subscription-button-for-recurring-payment-400
Can the memberships have an expiration date on them?
Yep, you can specify a membership duration for each membership level so when a member signs up he/she will have a membership expiration date based on the sign up date.
what about assigning a role to a particular membership signup. example – end user is going to purchase platinum membership, to have the role of author on my site. How do I pull this off?
For each memebership level you can specify a default WordPress Role. So when a member signs up under that membership level he/she will be assigned to that role.
How can I add custom fields to the register form, for example, phone number. And can I customize a different one depending on the membership that person is buying?
All the member information is saved in the Database. So adding custom fields to collect additonal information from members and storing them require database changes. So these changes are possible if you have PHP and HTML knowledge. If you do and would like to customize it then I can tell you which files to modify.
I don’t have that knowledge, however I found a plugin that adds fields to the wordpress registration form, will that work?
Nope, You will actually have to update the eMember database for that.
Is there a way that I can approve a member before he is able to enter the site. I might want NOT to allow someone to subscribe to my free membership.
@Gabriel, Nope, you can always delete or block a memeber account if you don’t want someone.
I have another question, what can I do to allow members who signed up for a free membership to upgrade to the next level (which in my case is a one-month membership)?
Thanks!
One more question: Is there a way to add a checkbox that says the potential members has read and agrees with my terms and conditions for membership?
@Jessica, When a member is logged in and makes a payment for membership then his/her membership level will be upgraded accordingly.
The best way is to make the customer agree to the Terms and Conditons before the payment. If you are using eStore’s shopping cart then this should be taken care of for you. The other option is to state something similar to the following on your Member Sign Up/ Registration Page:
“By Signing up you automatically agree to the “Terms and Condtions” -> Link to your T&C here
The site that I am designing for my customer has a twist to your membership flow.
1. User is directed to the site via a brochure or counselor
2. User visits the site and registers with site (becomes a subscriber)
3. User is then able to access a workshop page/menu
4. User selects the workshop they are associated with
5. User pays for the workshop
6. At this point they will need to be upgraded to a different permission level with access to pages/functionality designed for their access level.
Is this scenario possible with your plugin?
Thanks,
-tracy
Yep very simple, you just let them become a free member when they land on your site (so on your usual join us page only have free membership option).
Once they become a free member, they can view the workshop pages which have membership payment buttons for particular membership level. when they make a payment for a particular workshop their account will be automatically upgraded to the membership level that the payment button was setup for.
Let me know if it makes sense.
Thanks for your response, yes it makes sense.
I did leave out one piece from the flow by mistake. At step 5: User pays for workshop, they will need to enter a workshop code. Similar to entering a coupon or discount code on some shopping sites.
Is “coupon code” an option?
If not is it something that I can program into it?
Thanks again,
-tracy
Coupon is ony option but it sounds like you just want to get some special instructuion from the member at purchase time. If this is the case then you can just use the “Collect Special Instruction” option on the payment button which will let the customer enter some text. Checkout the 3rd product (Demo Engraving) on this demo page and you will what I mean:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wordpress-estore-plugin-demo-175
Looks like using special instructions will work. Thanks for your help. Looking forward to using your product.
-tracy
Hello,
How do members cancel their account?
If it’s a subscription then a member can cancel it rom PayPal. When a member cancels a subscription payment the plugin will get notified and it will automatically deactivate the member’s account.
If it’s a once of payment (e.g. a payment made using a “Buy Now” button) then there is no need to stop the payment… the member can delete their account from the “Edit Profile” page.
I’m having a small issue in the registration flow. Everything works perfectly until the new member clicks the register button. When they click the register button, they are redirected to a 500 server error page, but the registration goes through and I can see the new registration in the back end. Could you tell me what could be causing this error? Thanks!
Ok, I figured out that the problem was a plugin I was running “Super Cache”. When I disabled it, the registration stopped giving me a 500 server error. The only issue now is that I’m getting a line above the success note:
Member Registration
No recipient addresses found in header
Registration Complete! Please Login
What could be causing that? I’ve disabled all of the plugins except eMember, eStore, and Affiliate.
To me it sounds like you haven’t filled out the “From email address” field in the settings menu (see the “Email Settings” tab).
My email notifications are coming from WordPress, my subject line is working but they are still showing on my inbox as From: WordPress
found the answer: used this plugin, worked like a charm
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mail-from/
You don’t even need to use a plugin… simply use the following format in your “From email address” field
Your Name <youremail@example.com>
Leave your response!
Get the WP eMember Plugin
Categories
Blogroll
Recent Comments
Tips and Tricks Hot Items
Copyright © 2010 WordPress Membership ® All Rights Reserved | Powered by WordPress | Infinity Remix theme by Tips and Tricks HQ
Log in | Comments (RSS) | Entries (RSS)