Step 1: Create an Email Parser

AWeber use email parsers in situations where you want subscribers to add to your list via an email from a third party, typically a payment processor, rather than the subscriber sending an email directly from their email program.

To add a new custom email parser select “Email Parser” from the “My Lists” menu and choose “Add New” from the “Custom Parsers” section.

• My List -> Email Parser
• Custom Parsers -> Add New

The new email parser configuration will look similar to the following (Click to enlarge)

New Email Parser

There are only two fields (Description and Trigger Rule) that need changing here.

• Give a description for this parser, eg. eStore Parser
• In the Trigger Rule field, replace the “user\@domain\.com” with the email address that you have specified in the “From Email Address” field in the eMember’s email settings menu. For example, the email address I have specified in my “From Email Address” field is “admin@tipsandtricks-hq.com so I need to replace:

with

Below is a screenshot of my email parser (click to enlarge):

My Email Parser

Adding an Email Parser is really simple but even a small error can throw everything off.

Step 2: Configure the WP eMember’s Autoresponder Settings

Now all you need to do is specify the AWeber list name that you want your customers to be signed up to and enable AWeber Signup.

AWeber Settings Menu

Setup Preparation

To use a plain PayPal button with WP eMember you need two pieces of information:

• The URL of the IPN handling script
• The ID of the membership level that you are creating this payment button for

The WP eMember comes with a IPN handling script. It’s stored in the “ipn” directory inside the “wp-eMember” directory. The URL of this file should be something similar to the following (you will have to change “your-domain-name” to your actual domain name):

http://www.your-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-eMember/ipn/eMember_handle_paypal_ipn.php

The ID of the membership level (e.g. 4) can be found in the “Membership Level” menu of the WP eMember plugin.

Once you have these two pieces of information ready then put the following in a notepad and save it:
notify_url=http://www.your-domain-name.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-eMember/ipn/eMember_handle_paypal_ipn.php
custom=subsc_ref=4

Specifying the “Advanced Variables” in the PayPal button

When you create your button on PayPal from the “Merchant Services” menu, you will be able to specify some advanced variables in “Step 3″.

Specify advanced variables

• Check the add advanced variables checkbox
• Copy and Paste the text from the notepad saved earlier into the textarea.

Now, you can copy the button code and paste it in your “Membership Payment” page. When someone makes a payment using this button it will automatically create a membership for the membership level that is specified in the button.

2. How to Create Membership Levels

3. Configuring the Settings Options

4. Managing Content Protection

5. Integration with WP eStore for membership payment

Please note that it is not required to have WP eStore plugin for membership payments. You can use plain PayPal button for membership payments.

External Video Tutorials

• How to Make a Membership Site in WordPress and Protect The Content

Download the Shortcodes list file.

When enabled members will see the following icon at the top right hand corner of every post and page which can be used to bookmark that article:

When they click on it the article will be bookmarked and icon will change to the following:

Members who are not logged in won’t be able to bookmark and they will see the following icon:

A member will be able to access all his bookmarks from a page where you add the following tag (e.g. Manage Bookmarks Page):

Once you add the above tag on a page it will look similar to the following:

Manage Bookmarks Screenshot

Members can easily access any articles that they bookmarked previously from this page. They can also remove bookmarks from this page.

You can see how this feature works on the eMember demo site.

The basic member registration flow is similar to the following:

1. Visitor lands on your site.
2. Want to become a member after seeing some of the awesome content.
3. Follows the “Register” or “Join Today” link.
4. The above mentioned links will take them to the “Membership Payment” Page. It may look similar to the one here.
5. From this page they can decide which membership option they want to choose (eg. Free, Silver, Gold or whatever you are offering)
6. 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.
7. If they choose a “Paid Membership” then they make a payment by clicking on the payment button for the appropriate membership.
8. 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.
9. The member will receive an email that contains a “unique” link to complete the registration.
10. 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.

Simple Section Protection Example

Warning: Just remember that when you want to use section protection of a post or page you should not protect the “category” that the post belongs to. When you apply category protection for a category all the posts in that category is fully protected (it overrides all the small section protections in the post).

You can see an example of how the section content protection work on the eMember demo site.

1. Click on the “Members” menu from the “WP eMember” dashboard.

2. Click on the “Member Emails” tab

3. From this menu, you have the option do get the email list of all your members or for members from a particular membership level.

Get Member Email

A “Members’s Only” download page is simply another page that contains a whole bunch of download links that the members can use to download the products. So all you have to do is create a page (eg. “Member’s only download”) and put links to all the downloadable files on this page and then protect this page from the “Manage Content Protection” menu of the WP eMember plugin. Since the page is protected, only the members with correct membership level can access this page and download the file.

If you want to give access to a different set of downloadble files to your members based on their membership level (eg. silver, gold, platinum) then you can create few different “Member’s only download” pages (one for each membership level) listing different downloadble files and protecting the pages accordingly.

View the Member’s Only Download Page on the demo site to see how this is done. Log in using the following details:

Username: free123
Password: testpass

More Secure Download option when used with the WP eStore plugin

If you are using the WP eStore plugin then you can take this one step further. Instead of giving out the links to your products (eg. PDF file, Zip file, MP3 file) directly on the “Member’s Only Downlaod” page you can put a “Download” button that lets the user download a particular product. Whats the advantage? The member can download the product without knowing the actual location of the downloadable file (so the download location stay secret).

How to create a “Download” button using the eStore?

Configure the products in WP eStore then use the following shortcode for each downloadable product on the page:

[wp_eStore_download_now_button id=1]

1 is the Product ID of the product in this example.

The eStore and eMember plugins are pre-integrated so you don’t need to do any manual work for the integration. The only thing you need to do is specify the “Membership Level ID” in the eStore product’s “Reference Text” field when you create/configure an “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscribe” button to accept membership payment.

Example Scenerio

Here is an example scenerio, You have a membership level called “Gold Pass”. The id of this membership level is 3 (The ID for each membership level is listed on the Manage Levels screen). Say for example, you want to charge $25 for this membership level. So head to the “Add/Edit Products” menu of the WP etore plugin so you can configure an “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button to accept payment from potential customers. When you fill in the details of this product, just specify 3 (Membership Level ID of Gold Pass) in the “Reference Text” field which is under the “Additional Product Details” section. Now, Place this “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button you just configured on your Membership Payment/Join Us page.

When a member pays for the membership using this button the eStore plugin will know (from the Level ID you entered in the reference text) that this payment was for a “Gold Pass” and it will automatically create the appropriate member account and send an email to the customer. The email sent to the customers will contain a unique link. When they follow that link they will be brought to the registration page where they will be able to choose their Username and password to complete the registration and access the “members only” content.

If you have multiple mebership levels then create an “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button for each membership level and place them on your Membership Payment/Join Us page following the above instructions.