Creating a Members Only area or making it mandatory to register & login to view some or all of your website

Note* My client needed two blogs, one public, one private, so I installed a new WordPress with same theme on a sub directory and hard coded the navigation to be the same. You can do the same thing, or you can use this technique even if you only have one install.

Plugins used:
Contact Form 7
Members Only
BM Custom Login (OPTIONAL --> allows you to create a custom login page, for branding and usability, but is not necessary)

Pre-setup:Download, install & activate the plugins above. To install, upload plugin folders or files via ftp to wp-content>>plugins, or add new plugins in your plugin control panel in your dashboard.

Summary

If you install, activate & set up Members Only, Contact Form 7, & Binary Moon Custom Login plugins, you can create a password protected blog with controllable registration and branded login.

Here is how it might work: User goes to your webpage, http://yourdomain.com/ where they are redirected to a hidden page called "Join" that might look something like this:

http://yourdomain.com/join :

Please Login, or Register to view the contents of this area.

To Register, please fill out the form below:

From BM Custom Login plugin Creator

Once they login, they go right back to where they started from!

Let get started, shall we?

1. Create a page called “Join” and exclude it from your header. You can use the “Exclude Pages” plugin, though I’ve never tested it for myself, you can exclude the page by using the “exclude=” parameter in the wordpress tag:

<? php wp-list-pages(‘exclude=#’); ?>

This tag should live in the header.php file of your theme.

*Some themes with theme-options may give you the choice to exclude pages from your header, check your theme options in your dashboard

2. On your “Join” page, add a basic contact form from the Contact Form 7 plugin.

Paste the code into the content field of your “Join Page” but above it, add a link to the login page like this:

http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php
An example would look like this:
Code

Which would render like this:

3.Configure your Members Only plugin like this:

A. If you want your whole blog to be protected (as this article assumes) check the box that says “Members Only?”

Blog Access Options

B. Redirect to: Choose “Specific Page” from the drop down menu.

C. Redirection Page: type in the page name to specify the redirect page, for this article, the page name is “Join.”

ie: http://yourdomain.com/join

D. Login redirect: choose “Front Page” from the drop down menu.

*Choosing to direct your users to the “Join” page, versus the Login.php will enable the users who are not registered to register. This is a great way to control who registers for your blog. If you want to control this, make sure you change your settings in Settings>>General>>Membership: checking the box allows anyone to register for your blog, keeping that box unchecked allows you to have more control.

If you check “Anyone Can Register” then you do not need to redirect to page “Join”, which means you can skip step 1 altogether and in which case you would configure Members Only as follows:

Redirect to: Login Page

Return User: (check that box)

Login Redirect: Front Page

Now log out, clear your cache and try it out!

4. Make your custom log in page (optional)

See the Plugin site for How-To>>

Conclusion
This is a good option if you want to control who registers to your website (perhaps membership is selective or is premium), & if you want a branded login page.

Best part about this project? It was fun!