Once your membership site and protected pages are ready, the last step is letting people in. In this lesson, you'll give members access by hand and automatically, set up membership levels, and suspend or disable access when you need to.
Every member has an access status for your site. Enabled gives them access. Suspended keeps their membership but sends them to a page you choose when they log in. Disabled removes their access. You use the same three statuses whether you change them by hand or with an automation.
Giving access by hand is handy for testing. Use a test contact to see exactly what your members will see. Open the contact's record and go to the Membership tab. Click New membership, choose your site, set the status to Enabled, and click Save.
As soon as access is enabled, Ontraport sends the contact a registration email with your logo and colors and a link to create a password. After that, they log in from your site's login page. You get a copy whenever access is granted. To change the wording, hover over Pages, choose Membership Sites, open your site, and go to its Membership tab. Under Messages, check the box next to the registration email, click Edit, make your changes, and click Save.
Most members will get access through an automation. Go to Automations, then New automation, and start from scratch. If you've turned on other objects, like Companies or Deals, you'll find Automations under Contacts instead. Add the Purchases product trigger and choose your membership product. For a subscription or payment plan, you can use Open order is created. For a free membership, use Contact submits a form. Then click What happens next?, choose Update Membership Access, pick your site, set the status to Enabled, and click Done. Save and publish the map.
To give a few people free access, like friends and family, add a Go to element below the trigger and connect it to Update Membership Access. Then go to Contacts, select those contacts, click Automations, choose your membership automation, and click Submit.
You can also let visitors sign up themselves from your login page. Turn on Open registration in your membership site settings and choose the status new members get. Suspended is the safer choice. Then use an automation, starting with the Membership is created by open registration trigger, to change their status later.
To offer different levels, like silver, gold and platinum, create a custom field. Go to Contacts, then Settings, then Field Editor, and click Add Field. Choose Dropdown if each member has one level, or List Selection if a member can have several, like separate modules. Add each level as an option.
In your access automation, after the purchase trigger, add an Update Contact action that sets the level field. Then add Update Membership Access.
Now protect your pages by level. In a page's Display settings, under "Display this page to whom?", choose Some logged in members and add a condition: Field is this value, your level field, contains, and the level. Blocks have the same display settings, so you can show or hide parts of a page by level too.
You can also send each level to its own page when they log in. In your membership site settings, add a login redirect with the same kind of condition. Redirects are checked from top to bottom, and the first match wins.
When a member stops paying or cancels, change their status, either on the contact's Membership tab or with Update Membership Access. Use Suspended when a payment fails. In your membership site settings, set a Suspended redirect, the page suspended members see when they log in. Make it a page with the Update CC button, so they can update their card right away. Use Disabled to remove access, for example when someone cancels.
You can automate this too. Add the Open order is charged or updated trigger, choose your product and Charged but declined, and add a condition that the contact's access to your membership site is Enabled. Add Update Membership Access set to Suspended. Then add a goal, Open order is charged or updated, set to Charged and successful, followed by Update Membership Access set to Enabled. Members lose access when a payment fails and get it back when a charge goes through. The Declines and collections lesson covers past-due payments in depth.
So: enable access by hand for testing, or with Update Membership Access in an automation; use a custom field for levels; and suspend or disable access when payments fail or members cancel. If your site runs on WordPress with PilotPress, the PilotPress lessons later in this course cover access there. Next up, we'll bring it all together and build a members-only online course.