Dive deeper into more advanced PilotPress features, like various post and page settings, shortcodes, merge fields, tags and more. These features will make your life easier once you set them up.
Home > Ontraport for memberships > PilotPress: Ontraport's WordPress plugin > PilotPress advanced features
Home > PilotPress: Ontraport's WordPress plugin > PilotPress advanced features
PilotPress advanced features
Course Instructor
- The purpose of shortcodes and how to use them
- Best practices for WordPress merge fields
- How to add forms and videos to pages and posts
- How to add a login form to your page
Comments
[Block//Author//First Name ##cap_first] [Block//Author//Last Name ##cap_first] on [Block//Date Added %F j, Y g:i a%+0d0h0m]
[Block//Comment]
Leave your comment
14-day free trial. No commitment.
Related resources
[Block//Resource Type]
[Block//Resource Description ##ellipsis(166)]
Transcript
If you’ve seen the other PilotPress videos, you’ve nailed down the basics of Ontraport’s WordPress plugin. In this video, I’ll show you some more advanced PilotPress features.
Some of these settings are pretty complex, but once you’re familiar with them, these optional features are designed to make your life easier.
Let’s dive in.
I’ll start off by showing you some PilotPress settings for your posts and pages in WordPress.
If you’re already familiar with WordPress, you’re probably used to choosing a certain type of block when you add new content. When you’re working with the PilotPress plugin, be sure to use a Classic Block. Once you add it, you’ll find these PilotPress settings in your toolbar.
You’ll see the option to add shortcodes here. Shortcodes are little snippets of code that control which content is visible to which viewers. You can use them to show or hide certain content on your pages based on your viewers’ membership levels….just like old-school versions of Ontraport’s block display settings.
So say you have three membership levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. You may want to show a unique welcome message for each level on your homepage. To do that, you’d insert a shortcode that shows the right message to the right group.
Take a look at your options by hitting the toolbar toggle. You’ll see this shortcode dropdown with lots of possibilities to choose from. This might look a little overwhelming at first — but most of these codes work in pretty similar ways. I’ll break them down for you.
First, you have a few shortcodes that focus on your viewer’s membership level. These are “Has one,” “Has all,” “Does not have one,” and “Does not have any.”
Think about that welcome message I just talked about that’s personalized for different membership levels. Here’s how you’d do that with these shortcodes:
Start by adding “Has one,” since you’re welcoming viewers who already have a membership. You’ll get this shortcode.
See these straight quotes? That’s where you’ll plug in the membership level that’ll get access to this content. So if you only want to show this message to your Gold members, you’d simply add “Gold” here, like this. Then just replace “content” with your welcome message tailored to Gold members.
And if you want to show this to multiple membership levels — maybe Gold and Silver — just separate them with a comma, like this. Easy.
The next couple of shortcodes deal with tags. There are just two of these: “Has tags” and “Does not have tags.”
These work just like the membership level shortcodes you just learned about. But for these, you’re showing content based on the tags viewers have in their contact record, rather than their membership level.
For example, say you’re a fitness coach and you segment leads based on their interests. If a Gold member visits your homepage and you know that member is interested in cardio, you can promote your distance running plans to them. Other Gold members will see content that fits THEIR interests when they visit the same homepage. Maybe they’re into conditioning, so you’ll automatically show them your top weightlifting exercises instead.
So that’s how tags and shortcodes work together! Not too complicated.
These last few shortcodes have to do with what you know about your page visitors.
You’ll see them right here: “Is a contact,” “Is not a contact,” “Is a cookied contact,” and “Is not a cookied contact.”
These are a lot like your display settings in Ontraport, like “Show only to anonymous visitors” or “Show only to cookied contacts.” So if you’re already familiar with those settings, this will be a breeze.
This setting can help make your site more welcoming for all visitors, whether they’re new or returning. For example, you might set up your homepage to show a sign-up form — but only for visitors who aren’t in your contact database yet. Then you can collect new leads as they visit your site, without asking your existing contacts to sign up again. To do this, you’d simply use the “Is not a contact” shortcode for your form, like this.
You don’t have to do anything to these shortcodes — they’re ready to go as soon as you add them to the page.
Finally, your last shortcode is Resync contact.
This one is a little different — unlike the other shortcodes, it isn’t here to show or hide content on your page. Instead, it helps ensure that all your other shortcodes are up to date.
Whenever the page reloads, this shortcode will scan your Ontraport account. It’ll look at all the data you’ve collected about the current page visitor and make sure all your shortcodes have the right information. Then you’ll be sure each visitor will see the right content.
This is especially useful if you work with tags a lot. If you have automations that add or remove tags from your contacts, you’ll want to make sure your shortcodes keep up. This keeps it all in sync automatically.
That’s it for shortcodes — nice job! You’ve got a few more ways to get fancy with your pages and posts.
You have merge fields, which work the same way in WordPress as they do in Ontraport. Just pick the one you want from this merge field dropdown.
The formatting will look slightly different here, but it all works the same way. These merge fields will pull information straight from your records in Ontraport and drop them onto your page in WordPress. You can also add PURLs to your pages here — you’ll find that option at the bottom of your merge field list.
Then you have your Add media button. You can use this to add Ontraport forms and videos to your posts or pages in WordPress.
Just click on Forms here on the left, and you’ll see all the OntraForms you’ve created in your account. All you have to do is grab the one you want and it’ll show up on your page. If you want to include a video, click Videos here and follow the same process.
There’s one more thing to cover for your pages and posts: your Login Form.
When you’re building a membership site, it’s essential to have at least one page with a login form like this. Otherwise, it'd be pretty hard for your members to get in. It’s easy to add a login form to any of your WordPress pages using this button. Give it a click.
You’ll choose if you want to use the default style or customize it. The default WordPress login form is fine, but not super exciting. So check out what you can customize here.
You can control most of your login form’s design. Go ahead and tweak the colors, insert your logo, add whatever text you want. That’s all up to you.
Now look at this “Forgotten password” dropdown. When you turn this on, WordPress will help out your members whenever they forget their password. That’s all fine and dandy, but keep in mind that your “forgot password” email won’t have your business’s branding if it’s sent through WordPress.
That might be totally OK with you. But if you DO want to send a branded email when members forget their passwords, turn this option off.
Then you can create your own password reminder form. If you’re interested in setting this up, check out our Support Center article called “Create a WordPress Password Reminder Form and Campaign.”
That covers all the PilotPress settings you can use in your pages and posts: Shortcodes, merge fields, the Add media button and your login form. Now let’s look at a few more PilotPress settings.
To find these, go to Settings and click PilotPress. Since we’ve covered most of this stuff in other videos, I’ll skip down the list to “New User Register Settings.” Feel free to catch up on those other settings in the rest of the PilotPress videos.
These settings are pretty simple — here’s how they work:
First, you’ll have the option to sync WordPress users to your Ontraport contacts. That means whenever someone signs up on your WordPress site, they’ll get added to your Ontraport account automatically.
You’ve got a few options here: “No,” “Yes, New users only,” and “Yes, New and Existing Users.” Pick whatever makes the most sense for your situation. But keep in mind, your new WordPress members won’t appear in Ontraport immediately. For security reasons, we can only sync up your records when members log in to your WordPress site.
If you’re adding new contacts from WordPress, you can automatically give them tags when they land in your Ontraport account. Pick the tag you want to add here. If you want more than one, hold down shift and select a few tags.
As you move down the page, you’ll get the chance to add these new contacts to sequences or automations too. This is the same idea as the tags — you’re deciding what happens to these contacts once they hit your database in Ontraport.
If you have automation set up for welcoming and onboarding new customers, this would be a great place to incorporate it.
The last thing you’ll see here is about your logout settings. By default, WordPress will keep users logged in for 48 hours before booting them out. If you’d like to extend that time, you can do it here.
Awesome. Now you’re up to speed on how to manage new users on your WordPress site with PilotPress. At this point, you know just about everything there is to know about this plugin — so let’s take a look at some final advanced settings before wrapping up.
To get to these settings, click this Advanced Settings button.
First, you’ll see this option to Disable Verify Host SSL. This lets you manually edit the WP config file to bypass SSL verification temporarily. If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you, don’t worry — that means you likely don’t need to deal with it right now.
Next, you can opt to use your WordPress URL instead of your Site URL. In most cases, these two URLs are the same — so you probably won’t have to mess with this. But it’s here if you need it.
Finally, you can clear your PilotPress cache.
PilotPress caches data about your members to help your site load faster. When you hit this button, you clear that cache. It won’t log anybody out of their account, but it might cause a tiny delay when your site loads.
And that’s a wrap on the advanced features you can use with Ontraport’s PilotPress plugin. Nice job.
If you haven’t yet, check out the rest of the PilotPress videos in this series. And don’t forget — you can always build your membership site natively in Ontraport, too. If you want to learn more about how that works, check out the Membership Sites course to hear all about it.
Some of these settings are pretty complex, but once you’re familiar with them, these optional features are designed to make your life easier.
Let’s dive in.
I’ll start off by showing you some PilotPress settings for your posts and pages in WordPress.
If you’re already familiar with WordPress, you’re probably used to choosing a certain type of block when you add new content. When you’re working with the PilotPress plugin, be sure to use a Classic Block. Once you add it, you’ll find these PilotPress settings in your toolbar.
You’ll see the option to add shortcodes here. Shortcodes are little snippets of code that control which content is visible to which viewers. You can use them to show or hide certain content on your pages based on your viewers’ membership levels….just like old-school versions of Ontraport’s block display settings.
So say you have three membership levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. You may want to show a unique welcome message for each level on your homepage. To do that, you’d insert a shortcode that shows the right message to the right group.
Take a look at your options by hitting the toolbar toggle. You’ll see this shortcode dropdown with lots of possibilities to choose from. This might look a little overwhelming at first — but most of these codes work in pretty similar ways. I’ll break them down for you.
First, you have a few shortcodes that focus on your viewer’s membership level. These are “Has one,” “Has all,” “Does not have one,” and “Does not have any.”
Think about that welcome message I just talked about that’s personalized for different membership levels. Here’s how you’d do that with these shortcodes:
Start by adding “Has one,” since you’re welcoming viewers who already have a membership. You’ll get this shortcode.
See these straight quotes? That’s where you’ll plug in the membership level that’ll get access to this content. So if you only want to show this message to your Gold members, you’d simply add “Gold” here, like this. Then just replace “content” with your welcome message tailored to Gold members.
And if you want to show this to multiple membership levels — maybe Gold and Silver — just separate them with a comma, like this. Easy.
The next couple of shortcodes deal with tags. There are just two of these: “Has tags” and “Does not have tags.”
These work just like the membership level shortcodes you just learned about. But for these, you’re showing content based on the tags viewers have in their contact record, rather than their membership level.
For example, say you’re a fitness coach and you segment leads based on their interests. If a Gold member visits your homepage and you know that member is interested in cardio, you can promote your distance running plans to them. Other Gold members will see content that fits THEIR interests when they visit the same homepage. Maybe they’re into conditioning, so you’ll automatically show them your top weightlifting exercises instead.
So that’s how tags and shortcodes work together! Not too complicated.
These last few shortcodes have to do with what you know about your page visitors.
You’ll see them right here: “Is a contact,” “Is not a contact,” “Is a cookied contact,” and “Is not a cookied contact.”
These are a lot like your display settings in Ontraport, like “Show only to anonymous visitors” or “Show only to cookied contacts.” So if you’re already familiar with those settings, this will be a breeze.
This setting can help make your site more welcoming for all visitors, whether they’re new or returning. For example, you might set up your homepage to show a sign-up form — but only for visitors who aren’t in your contact database yet. Then you can collect new leads as they visit your site, without asking your existing contacts to sign up again. To do this, you’d simply use the “Is not a contact” shortcode for your form, like this.
You don’t have to do anything to these shortcodes — they’re ready to go as soon as you add them to the page.
Finally, your last shortcode is Resync contact.
This one is a little different — unlike the other shortcodes, it isn’t here to show or hide content on your page. Instead, it helps ensure that all your other shortcodes are up to date.
Whenever the page reloads, this shortcode will scan your Ontraport account. It’ll look at all the data you’ve collected about the current page visitor and make sure all your shortcodes have the right information. Then you’ll be sure each visitor will see the right content.
This is especially useful if you work with tags a lot. If you have automations that add or remove tags from your contacts, you’ll want to make sure your shortcodes keep up. This keeps it all in sync automatically.
That’s it for shortcodes — nice job! You’ve got a few more ways to get fancy with your pages and posts.
You have merge fields, which work the same way in WordPress as they do in Ontraport. Just pick the one you want from this merge field dropdown.
The formatting will look slightly different here, but it all works the same way. These merge fields will pull information straight from your records in Ontraport and drop them onto your page in WordPress. You can also add PURLs to your pages here — you’ll find that option at the bottom of your merge field list.
Then you have your Add media button. You can use this to add Ontraport forms and videos to your posts or pages in WordPress.
Just click on Forms here on the left, and you’ll see all the OntraForms you’ve created in your account. All you have to do is grab the one you want and it’ll show up on your page. If you want to include a video, click Videos here and follow the same process.
There’s one more thing to cover for your pages and posts: your Login Form.
When you’re building a membership site, it’s essential to have at least one page with a login form like this. Otherwise, it'd be pretty hard for your members to get in. It’s easy to add a login form to any of your WordPress pages using this button. Give it a click.
You’ll choose if you want to use the default style or customize it. The default WordPress login form is fine, but not super exciting. So check out what you can customize here.
You can control most of your login form’s design. Go ahead and tweak the colors, insert your logo, add whatever text you want. That’s all up to you.
Now look at this “Forgotten password” dropdown. When you turn this on, WordPress will help out your members whenever they forget their password. That’s all fine and dandy, but keep in mind that your “forgot password” email won’t have your business’s branding if it’s sent through WordPress.
That might be totally OK with you. But if you DO want to send a branded email when members forget their passwords, turn this option off.
Then you can create your own password reminder form. If you’re interested in setting this up, check out our Support Center article called “Create a WordPress Password Reminder Form and Campaign.”
That covers all the PilotPress settings you can use in your pages and posts: Shortcodes, merge fields, the Add media button and your login form. Now let’s look at a few more PilotPress settings.
To find these, go to Settings and click PilotPress. Since we’ve covered most of this stuff in other videos, I’ll skip down the list to “New User Register Settings.” Feel free to catch up on those other settings in the rest of the PilotPress videos.
These settings are pretty simple — here’s how they work:
First, you’ll have the option to sync WordPress users to your Ontraport contacts. That means whenever someone signs up on your WordPress site, they’ll get added to your Ontraport account automatically.
You’ve got a few options here: “No,” “Yes, New users only,” and “Yes, New and Existing Users.” Pick whatever makes the most sense for your situation. But keep in mind, your new WordPress members won’t appear in Ontraport immediately. For security reasons, we can only sync up your records when members log in to your WordPress site.
If you’re adding new contacts from WordPress, you can automatically give them tags when they land in your Ontraport account. Pick the tag you want to add here. If you want more than one, hold down shift and select a few tags.
As you move down the page, you’ll get the chance to add these new contacts to sequences or automations too. This is the same idea as the tags — you’re deciding what happens to these contacts once they hit your database in Ontraport.
If you have automation set up for welcoming and onboarding new customers, this would be a great place to incorporate it.
The last thing you’ll see here is about your logout settings. By default, WordPress will keep users logged in for 48 hours before booting them out. If you’d like to extend that time, you can do it here.
Awesome. Now you’re up to speed on how to manage new users on your WordPress site with PilotPress. At this point, you know just about everything there is to know about this plugin — so let’s take a look at some final advanced settings before wrapping up.
To get to these settings, click this Advanced Settings button.
First, you’ll see this option to Disable Verify Host SSL. This lets you manually edit the WP config file to bypass SSL verification temporarily. If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you, don’t worry — that means you likely don’t need to deal with it right now.
Next, you can opt to use your WordPress URL instead of your Site URL. In most cases, these two URLs are the same — so you probably won’t have to mess with this. But it’s here if you need it.
Finally, you can clear your PilotPress cache.
PilotPress caches data about your members to help your site load faster. When you hit this button, you clear that cache. It won’t log anybody out of their account, but it might cause a tiny delay when your site loads.
And that’s a wrap on the advanced features you can use with Ontraport’s PilotPress plugin. Nice job.
If you haven’t yet, check out the rest of the PilotPress videos in this series. And don’t forget — you can always build your membership site natively in Ontraport, too. If you want to learn more about how that works, check out the Membership Sites course to hear all about it.
Features
© Ontraport 2024
playlist_add_check
PCI DSS, Level 1
security
Privacy Shield Certified