In this month’s free plugin review, we’ll take a look at how you can restrict content access to only customers who purchase a product on your WooCommerce store. This is similar to creating a simple membership site where paid members get access to additional content.
You can restrict content access on a per-post or per-page basis using the free WooCommerce Pay Per Post plugin. Let’s take a look at how you can set this up.
The WooCommerce Pay Per Post plugin does require you to have WooCommerce active on your site. After you’ve installed the WooCommerce Pay Per Post plugin, the first thing you can do is to set up a product that customers need to purchase in order to gain access to specific content.
Let’s set up a virtual product priced at $50 that will give access to posts on the site.
Product that is required to be purchased to gain access
Next, we will grab the product ID – “22” in this example – and create a generic message that is displayed when a user lands on a restricted area of the site. To do this, we will go to Settings > WooCommerce Pay Per Post in the WordPress dashboard.
Create message to display for restricted content
This message will be displayed whenever a user lands on a restricted page for which they have not purchased the prerequisite product. You can use WooCommerce shortcodes to link to specific products that users can purchase to gain access. If you have custom post types that you would like to display this message for, you can include these in the field at the bottom.
Next, let’s create a post that’s restricted. You can restrict any page or post by defining the product(s) that need to purchased to gain access in the WooCommerce Pay Per Post section.
Set the products that need to be purchased for access
You can select multiple products that are required to be purchased for certain posts or pages. The Delay Restriction, Page View Restriction, and Expiry Restriction features are not available in the free plugin.
Once you’ve set up the restricted content, whenever a user lands on the page, post, or on the post archive pages, they will be shown the message that’s created in the plugin settings.
Message on restricted content
In the example above, the “Another hello world” post is restricted, whereas the “Hello World!” post is not restricted. The restricted content area links to the product that can be purchased to gain access.
You can add links back to the posts or pages that a product provides access to in the checkout notes section for easy navigation.
You can use the shortcode [woocommerce-payperpost template='all'] on a page to display all content that is available for purchase on your site in an unordered list.
List of all content available for purchase
This can help users see an inventory of restricted content on your site. For logged in users, you can display all content that they currently have access to using the shortcode [woocommerce-payperpost template='purchased'].
The WooCommerce Pay Per Post plugin provides a simple and easy way to have users pay for access to restricted posts on your WooCommerce site. This allows you to set up a basic membership site where customers pay for different areas of access.
Is there something else you use to create paid content access? Please share in the comments below.
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Hi
I would like to sell streamed video hosted at Vimeo but embedded in my WordPress site
1/ Content Restrict Pro seems to much subscription oriented
2/ WooCommerce does only provide to download files (videos, PDF, …) not to allow to stream a protected Vimeo video
Do you think this plug-in could do the job?
Kind Regards,
Pet
Hey Pet, if you’re looking to sell one-off access (not recurring billing), this plugin is an option that I’d have on my list!
I just wanted to let you know I just released a new version of this plugin yesterday with a ton more features!
The dealbreaker with this plugin is the cart. Why would anyone need a cart for one post one-off transaction? It is an extra step, which is absolutely unnecessary.
Hi! It’s possible pay for publish post (recurring)?
Hey Anderson, if you need recurring billing, I’d check out WooCommerce Subscriptions + WooCommerce Memberships instead.
Hello,
I’m looking for a plugin that allows me to create two user groups. The first one offers a service such as babysitting, helping and so on. The second user group is customers who need that service. I would like for the second customers to pay for contacting the first group. I saw that can be done with user role but is it possible for one customer from group two to pay for contacting only one customer, to pay for seeing the rating for only one customer?
Best regards
Hey Gabriela, I’ve not done something like this, but it sounds like WP Job Manager is a good fit instead (which can work alongside WooCommerce). The Paid listings add-on lets you charge people to list a job, which could be people looking for babysitting or services. I’m not sure if you can charge people to sign up / apply for jobs, but there are several add-ons available to help you extend how listings and applications are managed.