Your Members User Manual - YourMembers/yourmembers GitHub Wiki

#An Administrative Guide to Your Members

For: Your Members 12.0.6 and Higher

What is this guide for?

This guide is for day to day managing of Your Members site. It’s not an installation or configuration guide which can be found in the guides section. Your Members automates a lot of the user interaction tasks, but occasionally you may need to change something manually or assist a member.

With this guide you will be able to complete all the common tasks required for day to day running of membership side of your site and troubleshoot basic problems you or your users might come across.

##Who is this guide for? We have designed this guide to be a go-to document for anyone who uses the Your Members interface often, but isn’t necessarily a technical member of staff. This can be members of your administrative team who need to manage user levels and payments, or people who contribute content to you, such as editors, who need to know how to protect their content and how to make it chargeable. For that reason we’ve designed the guide to simple and easy-to-use, and avoided technical language wherever possible. Where we have used specific language, we’ve tried to include it in the Glossary.

If you’re a technical member of staff then you may still find the answer to your question here, and we’d advise that every license holder retains a copy of this basic information.

##What is Your Members? Your Members is a plugin for WordPress websites which can convert a site into a Membership site. It allows your organisation to manage subscriptions, take payments and protect content on your site as well as managing members.

To use Your Members, you will need to log onto your WordPress website using your login details. WordPress Login Page Once you are on the WordPress Dashboard, navigate to YM. This is the Admin Interface. YM Admin interface As you can see, within YM there are several different sections, which we’ll call tabs. For day-to-day running of the website you’ll only really need to use the Members, Membership and Content tabs. Tabs When you click on the tabs, a new set of tabs appear below them, which are the sub-categories.

NOTE: If you click on a subcategory (for example, Payment Gateways, which is a subcategory of Memberships) and then change tab (for example by clicking “Content”), when you change back, you will go back to the subcategory this was on. Don’t let this confuse you!

##How does Your Members work? Your Members is based around the idea of Membership packages. A package is a container with information about what will be given to the user and for how long when they subscribe to a given package. Each package will be associated with a package account type.

When a user subscribes to a package that package is applied to them, including its duration, cost and what content can be accessed. Packages can be supplemented with bundles and individual content purchases to provide access to additional content beyond what the package normally provides.

It’s important to remember that ALL users must have a package associated with them and they can only have one package associated with them at a time.

We’ll begin by explaining what we mean by “Package Account Type”

###Package Account Type The package account type is what decides which content your users can and cannot see. Every single user on your site will be assigned a Package account type. Some types are already set up for you; Guest, Free, and Member. As you can see below, Guest and Free are permanent package types and can’t be changed. If you’d like a variety of Membership types you can create your own.

I’ve chosen to create three membership package types. I’ve called them Gold, Silver and Bronze. These package account types can be used to protect your content from certain users. When you are creating your content you will be able to see these options appear at the side of the post, and you can use them to protect that post. Here we can see a post with the Account Type options. Account Type Options REMEMBER: Account Types are not hierarchical. This means that even if you run your website with this design: (where your Gold members have access to all of your content, but your Bronze members only a little, or are drip-fed) Hierarchy of posting

Your Members DOES NOT work that way. If you want to show a post to Bronze, Silver and Gold Account types, you have to select all three. Equally if you want to show content to both free users and paid users, you’ll have to select all the account types, not just “Free”.

###Packages Account Types are how Your Members defines each user which you have, but each user also needs a Package. Packages are the subscription which the user is on, and they are linked to Package Account Types. The difference between them is that you can have several Packages linked to the same Account Type. Most people have this setup if they want to offer a variety of prices for a variety of durations. An example would be this: Packages In this example I’ve created two packages for each Package Account Type. The first one is a single month subscription. The second is a 6 month subscription which includes a month free. Both of the packages can see the same content, but they will have different expiry dates.

NOTE: If you plan to use multiple packages for different lengths of time, remember that YM does not check any amounts, and so you should double-check to make sure the subscription prices are correct.

###Pages and Posts Pages and posts are both ways that you can publish your content using WordPress. The difference between them doesn’t affect YM, so we won’t go into it here. If you are interested in learning more about Posts then there is WordPress post documentation and there is similar WordPress pages documentation to describe pages. When you are creating your content you will see a variety of options appear around the text editor which relate to YM. Widgets These relate to protecting your content, drip-feeding it to your users, making it purchasable individually and bundling it together.

###Individual Content Purchases You may use your website as a way to sell individual pieces of content, or you may occasionally offer some of your content as an individual purchase. Often people choose to set this up as an alternative to a subscription, but remember that the user still needs to be registered and associated with a package in order to buy the content.

An example of an individual content purchase might be a post which you are showing free to users with a “Gold” Package Type, and which other users can buy for an additional $5.00. In my example I’ve used a “Silver” subscriber.
Individual Content Purchase With these settings in place, a “Silver” user will see this page, where the text wrapped in private tags above is missing, and there is a “Buy Now” button at the bottom of the post. A user on any of the unticked packages would see the same screen. Screen with content protected

###Bundles As well as Individual Content Purchases, you may sell bundles. Bundles are collections of content which you can sell separately from normal subscriber content.

However a user still needs to be registered and be associated with a package in order to buy bundles. A non-registered user would see this page if trying to access the bundled content:

Hidden Bundle

This page is generated because the user is not registered, and the bundle is not available to users who YM identifies as “Guests”. You can change these settings in the content editor:

Bundle protection settings

If your user is registered and on a package which can view the content, they will instead see this page:

Bundle available

##Creating, Editing and Deleting Users Users are the individuals who access your website. Once they have signed up to a package (either for free or through payment, depending on which options you have) they become a “Member”. For all of the actions below, you’ll need to be on the “Members” tab, which looks like this:

Members tab

###Create a user manually You may need to create users manually if for some reason they have not registered through Your Members. There are many reasons why this might happen, but you should not be entering users manually normally.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click onto the “Members” tab
  3. Scroll down to “Tasks”
  4. Click “Create User”
  5. Fill in the fields on the pop-up
  6. Apply a package from the dropdown menu
  7. Click “Create” Create User

###Edit a user Users can edit their own user profiles, but if you need to change some details, you can do that from the Admin Interface as well.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user you would like to edit
  4. Click on the username
  5. Edit any relevant details in the pop-up window. Details you can edit here include:
  • Colour scheme
  • User Role
  • Name
  • Contact information
  • About the user
  • Password You can see the “Edit User” screen here: Edit user screen

###Change user expiry date The expiry date for a user will set automatically when they subscribe to a package. If you wish to change the expiry date you can do so on the Admin Interface.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Members” tab
  3. Choose the member you would like to edit
  4. Click the checkbox next to the user name
  5. Scroll down to “Update User”
  6. Change “Expire Date” using the calendar
  7. Click “Update Selected Users”

###Change a User Password Users can either set their own passwords or the system can issue them with a password at the time of subscription. If you wish to change this later (or a user loses access to their account and needs it changing) it’s a simple process.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user you would like to edit
  4. Click the username
  5. Scroll down to the “New Password” field
  6. Put in the new password twice
  7. Select whether or not to notify the user of the change

###Delete a user You can delete users who are inactive, or users that you don’t want to have access to your content any longer. However be careful when deleting a user, as their subscriptions will cancel at the same time, and should you wish to create them again their expiry dates will have changed.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click onto the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user you wish to delete
  4. Click the checkbox next to the username
  5. Scroll down to “Tasks”
  6. Click “Delete Selected User”
  7. Click “Ok” in the pop-up This method can be used to mass delete users OR ALTERNATIVELY
  8. Find the user you wish to delete
  9. Click the delete icon in the rightmost columnDelete User
  10. Click “Ok” in the pop-up

###Suspend a user You can suspend users who are inactive or who you don’t want to access your content. This does not remove their account or details, it simply prevents them accessing the site as a registered and allowed user would.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click onto the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user you wish to suspend
  4. Click the checkbox next to the username
  5. Scroll down to “Tasks”
  6. Click “Suspend Selected User”
  7. Click “Ok” in the pop-up This method can be used to mass suspend users OR ALTERNATIVELY
  8. Find the user you wish to suspend
  9. Click the green tick icon Activate on the right-hand side of the page
  10. Click “Ok” in the pop-up If you have correctly suspended the user, the tick Activate will turn to a cross Deactivate

##Managing Users From day-to-day there are several checks you may want to do on your users in order to keep your system flowing smoothly.

###Updating a user status You may wish to change a users status if for example you find that they are now inactive on your site.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user whose status you would like to change
  4. Tick the checkbox next to the user you would like to update
  5. Scroll down to “Update User”
  6. Change the field you would like to edit using the dropdown menus
  7. Click “Update Selected Users” This method can be used to mass update users

###Exporting Users In order to analyse your membership data you can export it from the YM system as an XLS or CSV file. This will make it easier to search and manipulate the data.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Scroll down to “Export Member Data”
  4. Select the appropriate options using the drop-down menus
  5. Click “Export”

Export

###Filtering Users If you want YM to display only your active users, or only users of a certain membership level, you can achieve this on the Admin Interface.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Scroll down to “Tasks”
  4. Change the dropdown menu under “user % to wildcard match” to the value you would like to filter by.
  5. Complete any subsequent dropdowns.
  6. Click “Change Filters”

Here my members are unfiltered Members unfiltered And here, I have filtered my members by their package type, to show only paid members. Members Filtered

###Failed user search If you have tried to search your users with a filter and come up with the error Ajax failed to load or Task not Sent then you will need to check your pagination settings.

  1. On the “Members” and “Management” tab scroll down to “Tasks”
  2. Change “Page limit” to between 5 and 15
  3. Click “Change Page Limit”
  4. Scroll back to “Search and Sort”
  5. Change your filter setting to “No Filter”
  6. Click “Change Filters”
  7. This should revert your membership list to the basic setting. From here you can now add filters and should not get the error message.

###Checking a user expiry and last pay date You may want to check these details when comparing with your finances or when contacting a user about their account.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user you wish to check
  4. Their expiry and last pay date are displayed under dates

###Check user logs The user logs give you details of what

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Logs” tab
  3. Search for the user whose logs you would like to view OR ALTERNATIVELY
  4. Click on the “Members” tab
  5. Find the user you would like to check the logs on
  6. Click on the sliders icon next to the user’s package type
  7. A pop-up will appear showing you the log data.

##Group Membership Group Membership is a type of membership which Your Members offers. It allows a user to register as a “Parent” or group leader. They can then add their own “Child” or group member accounts separately. Group membership is a very useful feature of YM, but it is important to keep track of your membership groups so that users do not accidentally become “orphaned”. A parent-child group membership group will look like this: Group Membership ###Adding a Child Account

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Navigate to “Group Membership”
  4. Find the user you wish to be the group leader or “parent” account
  5. Click on the “Add Child Account” icon Add Child
  6. Enter the name of the child account
  7. Click “Add Child to Parent”
  8. The child account will appear below the parent account on the group membership page.

###Deleting a Child Account

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Navigate to “Group Membership”
  4. Find the Child Account you want to delete
  5. Click on the “Delete user” icon Delete user
  6. Click “OK” in the pop-up

###Orphaning a Child Account

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Navigate to “Group Membership”
  4. Find the Child Account you want to orphan
  5. Click on the “Orphanise User” icon Orphanise User
  6. Click “OK” on the pop-up

These options are also available on the main Member Management tab. On this tab group members show up slightly differently from non-group members. In this image the user Jaques does not have a parent account and therefore is inactive in his status. The users Geoff and Jan are Child Accounts of the Parent Account Nanette: Child accounts

##Posts, Pages and Packages Posts, Pages and Bundles are different types of content which you might have on your website. Packages are the collection of perks which a user gets on a particular level of membership.

###Creating a Package

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Memberships” tab
  3. Navigate to “Packages”
  4. Click “Add New Package”
  5. Fill in the fields
  6. Select the package type and duration from the dropdown menu
  7. Click “Save” Create Package

###Applying a Package

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user who you would like to apply a package to
  4. Tick the checkbox next to this user
  5. Scroll down to “Update User”
  6. Select the appropriate package from the “Package” drop-down menu
  7. Click “Update Selected Users” This method can be used to mass update users

###Change package details

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Memberships” tab
  3. Find the package you want to edit
  4. Click the “Edit” icon on the right
  5. Change the details you wish to change
  6. Click “save”

###Creating a post

  1. Log onto your WordPress interface
  2. Click “Posts”
  3. Click “Add New”
  4. Give your post a title and add some content
  5. Click “Publish” Protecting your post content
  • You can protect your content within a post by using private tags. These tags will hide the content between them from anyone who does not have the correct permissions. Your post will look a little like the image below when you are editing Private Tags

And then anyone who is not a “Member” will see the following when they access the page Hidden Content

  • There are several other ways to protect your content using shortcodes, and a comprehensive guide can be found on the shortcodes section of this wiki.

###Making purchasable posts

  1. Log onto your WordPress interface
  2. Click “Posts”
  3. Either select a post you would like to make purchasable,or create a new post
  4. Scroll down to “Your Members: Content Purchase”
  5. Click “make post purchasable”
  6. Fill out the fields Post Purchase

###Adding a coupon

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Memberships” tab
  3. Navigate to the “Coupons” tab
  4. Fill in the fields under “Add New Coupon”
  5. Click “Save” Coupon

###Gifting a user a post

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Content” tab
  3. Navigate to the “Individual Purchase” tab
  4. Scroll down to “Gift a post/page”
  5. Select the user you would like to gift the post to
  6. Select the post/page you would like to gift
  7. Click “Submit”

###Gifting a user a bundle

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Content” tab
  3. Navigate to the “Content Bundles” tab
  4. Scroll down to “Gift a Bundle”
  5. Select the user you would like to gift
  6. Select the bundle you would like to gift to them
  7. Click “Gift Bundle”

##Creating and Controlling Content The content you have on your site might be videos, text or downloads. It’s important to protect your content in the right way if you only want certain membership levels to access it.

###Adding a Download

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Content” tab
  3. Navigate to the “Download Manager” tab
  4. In the section “All Downloads”, click “Add New Download”
  5. Give your download a title
  6. Upload the file you want your users to access
  7. Choose whether or not to restrict access to the download
  8. Click “Save Download” Download

###Creating a bundle

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Content” tab
  3. Scroll to “Create New Bundle”
  4. Fill in the required fields
  5. Click “Create Bundle”

###Protect a post

  1. Log onto your WordPress interface
  2. Click “Posts”
  3. Select the post you want to protect, or if you are creating a new protected post, click “New Post”
  4. Select the package type you would like to be able to see the post REMEMBER: Packages are not hierarchical, so if you would like two levels of membership to see a post (for example, Gold and Silver members) then you must select both, not only Silver.

###Add content to a bundle

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Content” tab
  3. Navigate to “Content Bundles”
  4. Find the Bundle you want to add content to
  5. Click the “Posts” button. It should be next to “Edit” on the right.
  6. Select which items you wish to add
  7. Click the checkboxes to select them
  8. Click “Add item(s) to bundle”

###Drip feeding a post

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Content” tab
  3. Make sure you are on “Global Content Options”
  4. Scroll down to Metered Access
  5. Select “Enable Metered Access”
  6. Fill in the fields
  7. Click “Save Settings”

###Accessing Old Content If a user does not renew immediately after their subscription has expired then you may need to manually adjust their settings to allow them to see old content.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Make sure you are “Management”
  4. Tick the checkbox next to the user you want to change
  5. Scroll down to “Update User”
  6. Change the value for “Hide Old Content” using the dropdown menu
  7. Click “Update Selected Users”

##Managing Payments Most payments run through without a hitch but occasionally there might be a problem, or manual action may be needed, for example with invoices.

###Approving an invoice NOTE: This is only relevant if you are using the “Invoice” payment gateway. To check you have the gateway activated: Invoice Gateway Active

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Memberships” tab
  3. Navigate to “Payment Gateways”
  4. Check that you have the “Invoice” payment gateway activated

If you are using the “Invoice” gateway then you may need to approve invoices when they are sent out, and to give access to members who have paid via invoice. To do this:

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Navigate to the “Members” tab
  3. Navigate to “Invoice”
  4. Check the information, and add the amount which the user has paid
  5. You have the option to resend the invoice if necessary
  6. Click “Payment Recieved - Make Active” Invoice

###Failed Payments A payment may fail if there is a problem with your payment gateway, or if the user drops out of the registration flow before they have completed their payment. Users who do not appear to have completed payment show up like this: Non-paid user There are a number of reasons why a user may show up as not having paid:

  • Check your payment gateway to see if the money has reached your account. If it has then there may be some issue with the interaction between the gateway and YM.
  • The user may not have completed the payment flow. This could be because they have decided part-way through not to go ahead with their purchase, or it could mean that they never intended to pay. The best way to deal with this problem is to double-check that the user has paid, by checking your payment gateway account, and possibly by checking with the user.

If you are certain that the user has paid, you can manually activate their account by following these steps.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Navigate to “Management”
  4. Tick the checkbox next to the user whose payment has failed
  5. Scroll down to “Update User”
  6. Give the user the package they have tried to sign up for using the “Package” drop down menu under “Apply an entire Package”
  7. Click “Update selected users” The user should now show as follows, with an expiry date, package and active status Newly active user If you need to change the expiry date this is an option under “Update User”

##Common User Issues While running a membership site it is likely that you will occasionally have users contact you with problems they have using your site. We’ve listed some of the frequent (and easy to solve!) issues below.

###User Cannot Log in If a user contacts you saying they cannot log in, there are a few things you should check with them:

  • Check that they are looking at the correct login page
  • Check that they are using the correct details If the user feels that they are correctly doing the above
  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Go to the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user who is having the issues
  4. Check that their account is active - if it is not there will be an explanation under the “Status” heading Status Pending
  5. If the user is active, click on their user name
  6. Using the edit user menu, you can check their details and issue them with a new password if necessary. For more information on this, see the “Edit a User” and “Change a User Password” sections of this guide.

###Users are showing up as guests Your Members has an account type called “Guest”. It can’t be turned off because its designed to show a user who doesn’t have one of your packages applied to them. It might be because they aren’t logged in, or because they are but don’t have a package. If you have a registered user who is showing as a guest, there are a few possible reasons:

  • The user may have been registered outside of YM
  • The user was registered and had a package, but has lost it
  • The user entered a registration flow and was created, but never had a package applied

NOTE: Make sure that your users are going through a payment gateway. Even if you want them to have free access they should still pass through the “Free” payment gateway or they won’t have a package attached to them. To solve the issue of a user showing as a “Guest”:

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Navigate to the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user who is showing as a guest
  4. Check that they have paid

NOTE: If a user enters a registration flow, their user is created before they pay. If they decide not to go through with the payment for some reason, the user will become a guest because it doesn’t have a package. If there was an error, you can re-bill them and then manually activate them.
5. If the user has not paid, you can add a manual payment 6. If the user has paid they may have not had a package applied to them 7. Select the user 8. Scroll down to “Update User” and give them a package. You can find more information on how to do this in the “Applying a Package” section of this guide.

NOTE: If the user has paid but hasn’t had a package applied to them, you may have a more complicated problem. You should refer to our Why are my users showing as guests? guide, or contact your developer (if you have one).

###Users can’t renew Sometimes when a user expires they have trouble renewing. This is usually because your site set-up means that they get thrown out of the system altogether and then can’t re-add the package that they want. The solution to this is to either have one visible package at all times or to use expiry flows. This is something you can find more information about on our Custom Cancel and Expire Flows page, or ask your developer (if you have one).

###Users are seeing the wrong content Your users may contact you because they feel they are not seeing the right content for the package they are on.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “Members” tab
  3. Find the user
  4. Check to make sure that they are on the package that they think they should be on
  5. Assuming that they are on the right package, navigate to a page with protected content
  6. Check that you have selected the right protection level

TIP: It is a good idea to create a couple of fake user accounts for each package so that you can log onto those and see what the users see. 7. Remember that packages in YM are not hierarchical. For more information on this see the How Does Your Members Work? section of this guide.

###Users can’t download content Your users may have issues downloading content for several reasons.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “Content” tab
  3. Navigate to the “Download Manager”
  4. Click on the download your user is having trouble with
  5. Check whether or not the download is restricted to a different user level
  6. If the download is wrongly restricted, change the setting using the post select option
  7. If the download was correctly restricted, check the download shortcode and ID
  8. Navigate to the page where you have your download available
  9. Check that the shortcode and ID match the download you have created
  10. If they do not match, correct them on the page editor

##Add-ons This section deals with modules which you may not have installed on your site. If you are not sure whether or not you should be using this part of the guide, please check that you have the correct Add-ons installed before making changes. If you have a developer they will be able to tell you this information.

###Mail Manager Most of our users choose to integrate YM with a 3rd party system such as MailChimp. If you are using a 3rd party then you should be using their interface for sending your emails and setting up autoresponder series. For any problems that you have, the 3rd party should have some support documentation. If you use MailChimp, for example, then you can access their Knowledge Base for help.

If you have chosen to use WPmail with Mail manager, then you can use this guide to sending a broadcast e-mail, and setting up an autoresponder series.

###How to create an e-mail

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “MailManager” tab
  3. Navigate to “Create”
  4. Complete the “Name” and “Subject” fields
  5. Create your e-mail in the text editor. The visual editor has a range of word-processing tools.
  6. Click “Save E-mail” You can view your pre-written emails using the “View Emails” subcategory tab.

###How to send a broadcast e-mail

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click the “MailManager” tab
  3. Navigate to “Broadcast”
  4. On this page you can choose options for your broadcast
  5. Select the list of recipients that you want to send to
  6. If you have created a template beforehand then you can add it using the “Select Prior E-mail” dropdown
  7. If you have not created a template, enter the e-mail you’d like to broadcast into the text editor
  8. Choose the time you would like to send out your broadcast, and click “Schedule”

###How to set up an autoresponder series

NOTE: This guide assumes that you have already created the e-mails for your auto-sending series.

  1. Log onto the YM admin interface
  2. Click on the “MailManager” tab
  3. Navigate to “Series”
  4. Click “Create a New Series”
  5. Fill in the fields and select your e-mail list
  6. Click “Add”
  7. Click “Content Edit”
  8. Add your pre-created e-mails, and make sure to pick a length of time between e-mails

REMEMBER: The time you pick is the time between the e-mails, not the time from the start of the campaign (so if you want to send an e-mail per day, you should mark each e-mail for 1 day, rather than e-mail 1 for 1 day, email 2 for 2 days etc.) 9. When you have added all the e-mails you wish to include in the series, click “Enable”