How to Build a Membership Site With WordPress (Step-by-Step Guide)

If you have a certain skill or knowledge you can share in exchange for money, a membership website is ideal for you. To access premium content…members pay a certain subscription fee. Just like OnlyFa…I mean Coursera.

You get what I mean!

So, if you have exclusive content to offer that your members would pay to access, such as independent news or a cooking course, you must create a membership website right now.

In this guide, I’ll tell you how to create a membership site with WordPress from scratch.

 

What Is a Membership Website?

A membership website is basically like any other website, except it restricts some or all of its content behind a premium membership wall.

For example, Vox is a journalism website that has a membership program that charges $25 one-time or $5 to $10 a month for deeper access and member-only perks.

Source: Vox

For example, if you’re a course creator, you can create a membership website on WordPress and generate recurring revenue. I’ll walk you through the complete steps to create a membership website, so make sure to stick around till the end.

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What Are the Benefits of Creating a Membership Site?

There are many benefits to starting a membership website, but the most obvious one is generating recurring revenue. With a membership site, you can create a recurring revenue stream by offering monthly or yearly subscription plans. Think of it as a SaaS product.

Another benefit of starting a membership site is that it allows you to build a community. As your ideal customers, your community members will most likely purchase other products you might consider selling, such as merch or things you promote as an affiliate. They will also be your brand advocates, promoting your exclusive content to get more members to join.

Lastly, creating a membership site to sell your content is considerably cheaper than starting an online store selling physical products. With low startup costs and high revenue, membership sites can be very profitable in 2024.

Types of Membership Websites

Membership sites can be of different types, with a primary goal of generating revenue. Online course platforms are not just the only example of membership sites. In fact, a website that allows people to network with other relevant individuals from a specific niche after becoming a member is also an example of a membership site.

Here are a few types of membership websites:

• Networking sites
• Consultancy sites
• Nonprofit sites
• Fitness and wellness sites
• Fan club sites
• Subscription Box sites

Of course, there are countless other membership site examples. When creating your membership site, carefully select the type you wanna go forward with and the type of content that will be most relevant.

Prerequisites of Creating a WordPress Membership Website

Nowadays, creating a membership site is pretty inexpensive. You don’t need a developer, as WordPress plugins and themes make it super simple to implement all the required features and customize the look to fit your brand.

To create a WordPress membership website from scratch, you need to:

• Get a domain name
• Get a web hosting
• Install WordPress
• Install a membership plugin
• Install a WordPress theme

That is it. That’s all you need. To save time and have a better WordPress management experience, consider getting Cloudways-managed WordPress hosting. This way, you can launch your WordPress application with just one click.

Not only this, but with its support for add-ons like SafeUpdates and Cloudflare Enterprise, your site will load instantly, and your plugins, themes, and core will get updated automatically, saving you time.

How to Create a WordPress Membership Website (12 Steps)

Now, we’ll check out all the steps you must follow to create a WordPress membership website.

Step 1: Purchase and Register a Domain Name

The first thing you need to do is purchase a domain name. For example, www.wordpressmembersonly.com. Your domain name will be your address on the web—what people will remember you by.

When picking a domain name, make sure it resonates with your brand. Also, keep in mind WordPress SEO. Target relevant keywords in the domain name for which you want your site to appear on SERPs. This can help your site rank better.

Your domain name should not be too long as well—3 to 12 characters is enough.

Once you purchase your domain name, you can manage it with the registrar you bought it from, like Namecheap, or use a third-party DNS management system like DNS Made Easy, which speeds up domain propagation and simplifies domain management. Cloudways WordPress hosting offers the DNS Made Easy add-on for just $0.50/month per domain.

Step 2: Purchase WordPress Hosting and Launch a WordPress Application

You can purchase any type of web hosting from any reliable hosting provider of your choice. Shared cloud hosting is the cheapest option, but security and performance aren’t the best.

Managed cloud hosting, on the other hand, is much more secure, offers far better performance, and offers a completely hands-off experience. Cloudway is among the top cloud hosting providers in the industry, offering you the freedom to choose between 5 cloud providers (DO, AWS, GCE, Linode, and Vultr).

Our payment plans are simple as well:

• Cloudways Flexible – Starts from $11 USD/Mon
• Cloudways Autonomous – Starts from $35 USD/Mon

Here’s how simple it is to launch a WordPress application with Cloudways Flexible.

• Log in to your Cloudways Platform.
• Click on “Servers” from the top menu.

• Click on “Add Server” to launch your first server.
• Select WordPress as your application and any cloud provider. I suggest DigitalOcean. Choose a server size based on your needs. Name your app and server (you can name them anything).

• Lastly, click “Launch Now.”
• You can now access your application by clicking the www button.

Note: Your website is not live yet. To make it live, you’ll need to add your domain to Cloudways and point the domain to Cloudways using the DNS records.

• To take your website live, choose your application.

• Select Domain Management under Application Management.

• Click Add Domain.

• Now, add your domain.

• Next, you need to mark your domain as the primary domain.

• Click on Set as Primary.

• Next, you need to add your DNS records in your DNS registrar panel. To do this, Log in to your Domain Registrar Panel. I’m using Namecheap for this.
• Next, I’ll add my server’s IP address in the A record section. 

• In Namecheap, I’ll go to the Advanced DNS tab > A record and then add my server’s IP address. For first A record, type “@“ and then paste your server’s IP address.
• For second A record, type “www” and paste your server’s IP address again.

• You’ll need to do this step twice.
• Once you have added the DNS records, it may take up to 24 hours to propagate. You can check the status of your DNS records on whatsmydns.net.

• Once your website is live, it is time to choose a WordPress membership plugin.

Step 3: Choosing a WordPress Membership Plugin

You can choose any popular WordPress membership plugin. I’ll be using a plugin called Paid Membership Subscriptions. It is easy to use and perfect for creating subscription plans, adding recurring payments, and restricting content.

Step 4: Choose a WordPress Theme

• You can use any paid or free WordPress theme that resonates with your brand and the type of content on your site. I’ll be using “Digital Online Courses” by Titan Themes.
• Install and activate the theme and make any customization you like. I’ll be leaving it as is for this tutorial.

Step 5: Set Up Your WordPress Membership Website

• Now it’s time to set up your WordPress membership site. To do this, install and activate the Paid Member Subscription plugin.

Step 6: Create User Pages for Registration, Login, Account and Password Reset

• To get started, go through the setup wizard and allow the plugin to create registration, login, account management, and password reset pages. To do this, toggle on the switches and then hit continue.

Step 7: Choose a Design and Optimize the Login and Registration Flow for Your Users

• Next, Optimize the login and registration flow for your members. Toggle on the switches again and then hit continue.

Step 8: Setup How Your Currency Is Displayed and Choose a Payment Gateway

• Now, choose your preferred currency, renewal setting, and payment gateways. I’ll stick with the default Stripe payment method.

• Click on the Connect with Stripe button, enter the email address associated with your Stripe account, and click on the Submit button.

• Complete the account creation setup to move to the next step, which is creating a subscription plan.

• I won’t complete this step as I don’t intend to make any actual payments. This is just to show you how a membership plugin would work if you connect it to your preferred payment method, like PayPal.

Step 9: Create a Subscription Plan and Start Registering New Members

• Now it is time to create a subscription plan. Customers can access your content only after purchasing a subscription plan.
• Click on Add New and then create a subscription plan for your membership site. You can set the price to whatever you like, adjust the duration, and define how you want membership subscriptions to be renewed.

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Step 10: Restrict Your Content Based on the Newly Created Subscription Plans

To restrict any content, you can use the [pms-restrict] shortcode. For example, like this:

[pms-restrict subscription_plans="12"]

<p><strong>Lorem Ipsum</strong>&nbsp;is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.</p>

[/pms-restrict]

The image below shows how content on my site would appear without membership restrictions:

When you’re restricting content, you can choose to show a custom message to logged-out users and logged-in users. Like so:

So now if a user who is not logged-in tries to access my content, they’ll see this message.

Step 11: Create a Pricing Page to sell your plans

• Now, select the subscription plan(s) you want to use to generate a pricing page. You can choose a maximum of 3 plans.
• Since I just have one for now, I’ll choose it from the drop-down menu. You must also choose the style of your pricing page.
• Customize your pricing page however you like and publish it.

Step 12: Preview and Test Your Membership Site

• Whenever someone visits my membership site, they’re required to register.
• So…to demonstrate that, I’ll register myself by filling out my details on the registration page that we created earlier.

• Once I click the Register button, my details should appear in the “Payments” tab in the Paid Member Subscriptions plugin.

• As you can see, my user name, subscription amount, date/time, and type of subscription are appearing within the plugin, which I can track and grow.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, membership websites allow you to generate steady recurring revenue. By creating exclusive content that your community would love to consume and placing it behind a paymentwall, you can monetize your content with a membership website.

WordPress makes it super easy to create a membership site. And Cloudways managed WordPress hosting makes it super easy to launch a WordPress site in minutes.

In this blog, I covered everything you need to know to create a WordPress membership website: purchasing a domain and hosting, updating DNS records, installing a theme and membership plugin, and finally, setting up a membership website.

If there’s anything I may have missed, do let me know in the comments below.