Tips and Tricks

Restrict registration to specific email domains, IPs, or other data

Chad Butler · Jun 7, 2017 ·

WP-Members allows for customizing the registration form validation. This feature can be used to restrict registration based on the user’s information such as email address, IP address, or some other data point. This article covers how to do that and includes some basic examples.

It should be noted that this only applies to WP-Members registration. It has become more common to integrate WP-Members with other plugins that also have registration, such as WooCommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress, etc. If you are using one of these plugins for registration, that’s fine – but you need to then look into their process for custom validation. Continue Reading →

Create a “free” category for all registered users when using the PayPal Subscriptions extension

Chad Butler · Jun 6, 2017 ·

When using the PayPal extension, any blocked content will require the user to have a valid and current subscription with an expiration date in the future. Otherwise, when viewing content, it would ordinarily be replaced by a message indicating they either have not completed payment or that their subscription has expired and they need to renew.

The following script will allow you to create a category or categories that are still restricted to registered users only, but they do not need to have a paid subscription – essentially a “free” category that still requires registration but not completed payment. Continue Reading →

Change the WordPress new user notification using the wp_mail filter

Chad Butler · Jul 11, 2016 ·

I have shown in the past how to change the WordPress new user notification by rewriting the wp_new_user_notification() function, which is a pluggable function. But the transition from WP 4.2 to 4.3 showed why even pluggable functions can be problematic. So here is a way to do it with a filter that almost no one knows about – wp_mail. Continue Reading →

Timestamp when a user updates their profile data

Chad Butler · Jul 9, 2016 ·

Here is a quick little snippet that will allow you to timestamp a user’s profile when they update their data. This will allow admins to know quickly how current the information is. Continue Reading →

Integrating with Easy Digital Downloads

Chad Butler · Jul 5, 2016 ·

Easy Digital Downloads is an incredibly popular plugin that allows you to create a digital product store using WordPress.

You can require users to be logged in to checkout in EDD, but that does not restrict a download link from being used when the user is not logged in. Restrictions can be put on the link in terms of number of times it can be downloaded and disable redownload, but that can lead to a poor user experience – being over protective can create problems for legitimate users while protecting what amounts to a “perceived” risk rather than real.

But you can integrate with WP-Members to force a user to be logged in to actually download the file. This way, even if the link is known and not expired, the user will be redirected to login if they attempt to download without being logged in.

Continue Reading →