Allowing Only New Content Access for Members

Today’s Ask Sell with WP is from Toby:

I have a news site that my members should get access to my new posts and videos, not the posts and videos I have already created. They only get access to new things that are published during the membership. Is there a way or some plugins I can use to do this?

I’ve never had a great answer for Toby’s question until recently. Most membership plugins are geared towards sites with evergreen membership content, such as courses or tutorials, and thus members get access to set collections of content as soon as they sign up, or on a delayed / dripped schedule.

However, Restrict Content Pro has recently released an add-on that makes this kind of set up not only possible, but very easy for merchants to implement. You can learn more about Restrict Content Pro in our most recent review of the plugin.

The Restrict Past Content add-on was released recently to let you create a new-content-only membership set up. A Professional License or higher ($199) is required to use this add-on.

When a member signs up for a subscription level, the member will have access only to content published after the signup date, and cannot view any previous content.

Past content restrictions are enabled on a per-subscription level basis, so you could use this model for some memberships, then have an “unlimited” membership that can access past content as well. One of the cool things about this set up is the “Exception period” setting. You can enable “past content” restrictions for members in this subscription, but you can give them a “grace period” with the exception period.

For example, if I want to give new members access to content from 3 days prior to their signup date along with future content, I can enter an exception period of 3 (the documentation has some additional details). This helps you engage new members immediately by giving them access to some content to start the membership until new content access kicks in and they see some freshly published articles, videos, tutorials, or other membership posts.

You can also make some posts available to all members, regardless of signup date. This is great for content that goes over membership community rules, expectations, purchase forms, or other content that all members should see. You can enable overrides from the page or post while editing it:

The Restrict Past Content add-on for Restrict Content Pro gives you a simple way to allow new content access for members, while keeping previous or past content locked down. Members can only see content published after their start date, or content published in their exception period. This should provide a great solution to your problem Toby!