Create and promote membership plans
Structure your membership, create plans and promote them to your website so that people can join and pay online.
There is an overview video at the bottom of this article.
Create a membership plan
- Go to Settings > Membership plans.
- Click Create new membership plan.
- Choose the type of plan you want to create.
The different types of membership plans each contain slightly different functionality. Once you have created a plan you cannot change its type so make sure you understand these before creating plans.
| Individual | One person can subscribe for themself. |
| Joint | One person can subscribe and add joint members. |
| Proxy | One person can subscribe on behalf of another person, e.g. a parent subscribing on behalf of a child. |
| Organisation | One person can subscribe on behalf of their organisation. The person subscribing is labelled as the 'key person' at that organisation and other staff members can be affiliated and granted the benefits of membership. |
Configure membership plans
Each plan can be separately configured according to your needs.
| Settings | Add a name, description and cost. Choose the payment methods you wish to offer and the billing frequency. The billing frequency cannot be changed after you create the plan. |
| Form layout | Choose the contact fields and consent choices you would like to display on the subscription form. |
| Welcome email | Add your own custom message to the welcome email that is always sent when a person subscribes. |
| Advanced | The advanced section contains sensible defaults for most plans but it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with what these settings do in case you do need to change them. |
Create a membership page
You must designate a single page from which to promote your membership plans. This page is set in Settings > Features > Membership. We recommend you feature this page at the top level of your menu structure. This is also the page that website users will be directed to when trying to access member-only content.
Add the membership content block
The simplest way to promote your membership plans is to add the Membership content block to your membership page.
This block presents your membership plans in a pre-defined layout. Edit the block to define which plans are shown.
List plans with a custom layout
If the built-in layout of promoted plans does not meet your needs, create your own manual page layout in the body area of your membership page.
You can place your plans in a list, a table or a series of columns - it's up to you. The main thing you will need is the link to the membership plan subscription form. This link will always be in the following format:
/membership_subscriptions/new/with/1
The number on the end of the URL corresponds to the ID of the membership plan. To get the URL for a specific membership plan subscription:
- Go to Settings > Membership plans.
- Choose a Membership plan.
- Click Go to form from the action menu (...) for that plan.
- Copy the URL from the address bar of your browser.