Note: you only need to use one of the following two methods (there is no need to follow both of them)

Method 1

Go to the settings menu of the eMember plugin and check the “Free Members Must Confirm Email Address” field. When this option is checked, the standard registration form gets replaced with with a small registration initiation form for email verification (the user will see the full registration form after the verification). When a user fills in this email verification form (name and email address) a unique registration link is sent to the specified email address. Users will only be able to register for a free member account after they click on the unique registration link sent to their email address.

Method 2

In this method you simply need to add in one extra step before the registration.

Create a new WordPress page with the desired name (example: Free Membership) then place the following shortcode on that page:

[free_rego_with_email_confirmation]

Now, you can place a link on your “Join Us” page to this newly created page to start sending potential visitors. When they fill in the form created by the above shortcode they will receive an email which will let them complete the free membership registration after they click on the link sent to them via email.

Note

I get asked the following question a lot on this “Free member must confirm email” topic:

Q. Can we still use the full registration form for free membership?

A. The key thing to understand here is that you are not replacing the full registration form. The member will still need to fill in the full registration form and choose the username and password. All you are doing is adding a step before they get to do that to make sure the email address gets confirmed. The summary…  when a vistior fills out the small form and clicks on the link sent to him/her via email the visitor will be able to fill in the full registration form and become a free member.

Essentially this is the same process as the paid membership. In this case, instead of making a payment the visitor is filling out a small form to initiate the membership account creation process.

What is Google First Click Free Feature?

• Read the details of First Click Free feature from Google’s site
• More details from the Google Webmaster Central Blog

What You Need to be Aware of?

• When you use this feature a visitor (non-member) can see your protected content if they follow a link from Google’s Search result. So yes, you are somewhat compromising the security of your protected content.
• All users who click a Google search result to arrive at your site should be allowed to see the full text of the content they’re trying to access.
• The page displayed to all users who visit from Google must be identical to the content that is shown to Googlebot.
• We implemented this feature following exactly what Google recommended and we intend to keep it this way (it is good idea to follow Google’s policies if you don’t want to get your site banned).

How Do You Enable it in eMember?

1. Go to the settings menu of eMember and check the “Enable Google First Click Free Feature” field to enable this feature.
2. Wait for Google to index your protected content.

1. Create a post/page in WordPress.
2. Embed the video on the post/page that you want to offer to the members of a particular membership level. (If you don’t know how to configure the basic membership settings using WP eMember please watch the video tutorial here).

3. Go to WP eMember->Membership Level->Manage Content Protection section under WP Dashboard. In this section you can set which pages/posts you don’t want the anonymous visitors to see. In this case you can set protection to the post/page you just created and grant access to this post/page for a certain membership level (Detailed explanation can be found here).

4. Now whenever any member from that particular membership level (the one you granted access to) logs in, the member will be able to view the content of the page (in this case: the video you embedded on that page). Any other anonymous visitors will be asked to log in when they stumble upon that post/page.

This will be good enough for most users but if you want to add another layer of protection for your super secret videos then continue reading.

The Ultimate Video Lockdown

The key is to use Amazon S3′s private/protected file option.

To add complete protection to your videos we recommend you use the following two service/product with eMember:

• Amazon S3 Account
• WP Lightbox Ultimate Plugin

Amazon S3 has an option where you can make a video file private (If you are selling video content on your site then you should be using Amazon S3). Amazon S3′s private/protected video can only be retrieved by an application using a secure API so there is no way for anyone to go directly to the URL of the file and download it.

The WP Lightbox Ultimate plugin has an option that can use the secure amazon s3 API and allows you to embed private/protected Amazon S3 videos on a WordPress post or page.

The following steps will ensure the complete protection of your videos:

Step 1: Upload your videos to Amazon S3 and make the files private/protected so no one can retrieve the file without the secure API (only you know the API access keys).

Step 2: Embed the private video on your WordPress post or page using the WP Lightbox Ultimate Plugin. You can directly embed the private/protected video on the page (no lightbox) or embed it using the lightbox option (the video will play in a lightbox).

Step 3: Protect the WordPress post or Page using eMember so only members with the correct permission can see the content of the page.

The following video explains how this protected/private Amazon S3 video works with the Lightbox Ultimate plugin:

WP eMember allow you to enable site wide protection for your WordPress site. Simply go to the WP eMember settings menu and check the “Enable Domain Level Lockdown” checkbox.

Enabling site wide content protection

When this option is checked it will restrict anonymous visitor access to your site (the site won’t even load unless the visitor logs in as a member). The only page the visitor will be able to access on the site when not logged in is the “Join Us” page.

When you use this option anyone trying to access your WordPress site will be greeted with the following screen:

Prompt to anonymous visitors when they try to access your site

The only action available to the visitor is either to log in as a member or signup for a membership.

Depending on your situation you may need to assign multiple membership levels to one user. In this setup you want the membership levels to stack. So for example, if someone belongs to “Membership Level A” and he makes a payment for “Membership Level B” then he will end up with two membership levels in his profile (Level A and Level B). To get this behavior simply check the “Enable Secondary Membership” field from the settings menu of the WP eMember plugin. You can also assign additional membership levels to each of your members when you edit their profile:

Multiple Membership Levels Per User

If you have integrated the payment buttons with eMember already then when a logged-in member makes a purchase using that button the membership level will be automatically added to their profile.

Note: Remember, even though a member can have multiple membership levels assigned to them, there will still need to be a primary membership level for the member. When you use auto upgrade it will work based on the primary membership level of the member.

Step1: Enable this feature by checking the “Enable Public profile Listing” field in the settings menu of WP eMember.

Step2: Create a WordPress page and use the following shortcode to display the member list:

[wp_eMember_user_list]

This will show the member directory like the following:

Public Profile Listing Sample

Clicking on an username will bring up the details of that user:

Public Profile Details Sample

If you do not want to display the “Email Address” field then you can use the following shortcode to display the public profile listing which will keep the email address of the users hidden:

[wp_eMember_user_list no_email=1]

To integrate MailChimp with eMember simply go to the “Autoresponder Settings” tab from the Settings menu of eMember and set it up. 

MailChimp Integration for eMember

This will make it so after a member registers on your site he/she will automatically be signed up to your mailchimp list.

In order to customize which fields appear on the form please go to the “Pages Settings” tab from the eMember settings menu. There are two sections on this page that allows you to turn on/off certain fields from the registration and edit profile page.

Customize which fields appear on the registration form

Customize which fields appear on the edit profile page

 Adding More Custom Registration Fields

If the default fields given by eMember is not enough then you can add more custom fields to the registration and edit profile form to collect data required for your business. Simply go to the “Custom Field Settings” tab and configure the extra fields that you want to add. After you hit the “update options” button the extra fields will show up in the “Registration” and “Edit Profile” form on your site.

Remember, the configured fields will show up on your registration and edit profile page directly… you don’t need to configure these fields from the “Pages/Forms Settings” section.

Click on the image to see an enlarged version of the image.

Add more custom registration fields

For example, I have placed this compact login form on the header of my theme and it looks like the following to an anonymous visitor:

Compact Login Form Display (when not logged in)

When a member logs in it looks like the following:

Compact Login Form Display (when logged in)

How to Use the Compact Login Form?

You can use the following shortcode if you are placing it on a post or page:

[wp_eMember_compact_login]

If you are placing this on your theme’s template file then use the following PHP fuction where you want it to appear (e.g. header.php, footer.php etc):

<?php echo eMember_compact_login_widget(); ?>