On a recent project, a solution was requested to lock down listings for those who have yet to become customers (i.e., purchase a subscription). I’ve tried many membership plugins to do something similar, but these solutions can sometimes be overkill, too heavy, and ineffective.
I use the WooCommerce Subscriptions and WooCommerce Memberships combo within my businesses. While I could have easily recommended this combo, we didn’t need subscriptions for this project, and the WooCommerce Memberships plugin was a bit more than required.
Enter Content Control, a free, lightweight plugin that’s super easy to implement.
I tend to shy away from free solutions because I want the vendor to be incentivized to keep pushing the product forward (i.e., make money). In this case, Content Control runs on a freemium model, making it a no-brainer decision.
This guide will teach you how to prevent users from viewing Listings unless they have purchased a product (e.g., membership) from your MyListing website.
Lock Down Listings
In the steps below, we will prevent everyone except those who are Administrators, Editors, or Customers on your MyListing website.
- Install and activate the Content Control plugin.
- WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Content Control
- Click the ‘Add a Restriction’ button.
- General > Restriction Title > Enter something like ‘Listings Lockdown.’
- General > Who can see this content? > Leave the default setting.
- General > Which role(s) can see this content? > Check the ‘Administrator,’ ‘Editor,’ and ‘Customer’ roles.
- Protection > Choose how to protect your content > Leave the default setting.
- Protection > Where will they be taken? > Custom URL
- Protection > Redirect URL > Click on the ‘gear’ icon and select a page to redirect non-customers. (Note: You could redirect to either a page where your pricing tables are or, a better option, create a custom page with some education that covers the benefits of signing up for a membership.)
- Content > Choose a content type to get started > Click the drop-down and choose ‘Listing.’
- Click ‘Add’.
When someone doesn’t hold one of the roles mentioned above, they will be redirected to your protected content page, where you can get them into your sales funnel.
I’ve just scratched the surface of this plugin’s possibilities. You can set up multiple rules for locking down Listings, other types of content, etc.
Customer Role
Over the years, I’ve found that sometimes users are granted the Customer role on a MyListing website even though they haven’t purchased anything. This happens despite the default WordPress setting (WordPress Dashboard > Settings > New User Default Role) being set to ‘ Subscriber’.
So, what do we want to do to ensure the ‘Customer’ role is not handed out to anybody who registers on your website? To do so, add the Set WooCommerce Default User Registration Role code snippet to your website.
Video Tutorial
