To allow payments, the plugin uses either EDD (Easy Digital Downloads) or WooCommerce. Both plugins are free and grant access to payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe (note that some gateways might be paid)
TIP: Can I Lock Only Posts? Or Pages Too?
You can lock any content type: post, page, and even custom post types from other plugins!
For the sake of brevity, we mostly use "post" in this article and in the plugin interface.
Use Case Assumptions
In this example use case guide, we'll cover how to charge users via direct payment to have access to parts of your website, such as pages or posts.
We also consider you bought the plugin, but not installed it, and that you have not installed either EDD or WooCommerce.
Choose - Charge For Accessing Each Post or For Whole Website
The first decision we have to make is how to charge users.
So let's head to the Settings → General tab, where you can configure just that in the "Subscriptions" section.
Subscription model option
Pricing Options
User purchases access for each post - Edit a post to set a price for it
User purchases access for groups of posts - Create a price group, then edit a post to assign it
User purchases access for either individual posts or groups of posts - Edit a post to either assign an individual price or a price group
Effectively, it's a combination of the previous two
Setting up the pricing options
Create Options For Prices
How It Works
Create a price option
Assign it to a post
(Optionally) Create a pricing group and bundle multiple posts into it
In the plugin settings you can define several options: create groups and set its pricing. In the following example, both groups have three subscription tiers.
Example of pricing options
TIP: Section is Empty?
If there's no option to create a pricing group, ensure these are activated
Pay Per Post EDD add-on
WooCommerce or EDD
Adding pricing options
TIP: For Decimals, Use Periods
When setting prices with decimals, use periods (.), and not commas.
Good example: 2.99
Bad example: 2,99
TIP 2: Period Options
You can create options in: minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and lifetime
Select Price For Accessing Your Post or Posts
Time to determine which posts are locked behind a paywall.
First, create or edit the relevant post.
Editing the post
Then, scroll down to the CM Pay Per Posts metabox.
Setting up a group or individual price for accessing a post
In-depth Look
Metabox for setting up a group or individual price for accessing a post
Which options (1 and 2) are available on each post depends on the settings.
Setting a price group
Optionally, set one price that will apply only to this post
Now, you should edit each content to set its pricings.
Example: Post With Multiple Pricings
First, we edit the desired post.
Editing the post
Then, we check the metabox "CM Pay Per Posts" and add the price option. In this case, there are two:
Pricing group "Basic articles"
Individual price - lifetime access for $40
Setting up a group or individual price for accessing a post
Now, users will be prompted to pay before accessing the content.
Example of group and individual prices for accessing the post
SEO: Show Full Content To Search Engines
For SEO purposes, you can enable indexing the full post content by the search engines' crawlers by enabling the option "Show full post for search engines' crawlers".
The plugin will serve the entire post instead of the payment box for crawlers that request your website with the specific User-Agent HTTP header.
Layman Terms
This setting allows search engines like Google to "see" the full post, even if it's behind a paywall.
If the search engines can't "see" the content, they will have a hard time indexing and ranking it properly.
You can manage the supported search engines by editing the setting "Search engines User-Agent list". Each row is in the text field a separate regular expression that will be searched for in the User-Agent header. You can add your own expressions to match different search engine.
Back in the General tab, you can choose what is shown to visitors before they pay.
Show only part of the content (more options) - Specify how much of the content is hidden.
Hide only content - Hides the complete content.
Hide full page - Hides the full page, including content, header, and footer.
Hide specific page elements (more options) - Specify which elements of the page are hidden.
1) Show only part of the content additional options
a) Use post excerpt
If enabled, post excerpt will be displayed (if available) until the user pays for the access.
If disabled, the post content fragment will be displayed.
Excerpt Example
With the following excerpt
Adding an excerpt to the post
The excerpt is shown before the pay box
Displaying a post excerpt before the access to post is purchased
b) Show first x% content
Show a percentage of the post content. Only works if "use post excerpt".
c) Apply fade out effect
Gradually hides the content, respecting the percentage value.
Example
50% content and fade out effect.
Fade effect
2) Hide Full Post in Frontend
If enabled, will hide the full post (starting from the Read More tag) until the user pays for the access.
Backend vs. Frontend Example
Hiding full post
3) Hide Full Page
Hides all elements of the page.
Example
Hiding full page
4) Hide Specific Page Elements
ID of Block (only one) to be replaced with payboxes
Set one element ID which will be replaced with payboxes. E.g. "main". Accepts only one ID that is not inside the post/page content ID of Blocks to be hidden:
ID of Blocks to be hidden
Set the element ID which will be hidden. To add multiple, separate them by commas. E.g "main, content, footer".
The element cannot be inside the post/page content.
Note: Doesn't Include Post/Page Content
This feature does not apply to content inside the page/post. As such, in the following example the IDs box and content1 would not be hidden.
Hiding specific page elements
TIP: Finding ID
To find the ID of an element, use the inspect tool of your browser. Locate the element inside the elements list (called DOM tree), and copy its ID. Note that not all elements necessarily have IDs.
Full View
How to find the ID of an element
Detail
ID of the element
More Options
Also in this tab, you can set:
Reload Browser When Subscription Expires - If enabled, script will check in the background if the subscription is still active and reload the browser when it expires or user has been logged-out to disallow further reading post.
Allow Subscription Form for Guest User - If enabled, guest users (non-logged-in) will see a subscription form. They will them be able to log in during checkout.
Allowing / disallowing guest users to pay for access
You can also o restrict only sections of the content - for instance, the second and third paragraphs of a post.
If the user is not a subscriber, he/she will see a "Restricted Section" box instead of the locked content. A paybox will be triggered at the end of the content. This is done via a shortcode.
How to Use the Shortcode
Locking the content is easy. Simply surround it with the shortcode, as shown:
[cmppp_restricted] any content [/cmppp_restricted]
Example
You can use the shortcode many times in the same content.
Back-end
Back-end: Restricting part of the content
Front-end
Front-end: Restricting part of the content
TIP: Customizing the Text
You can customize the text of the restricted section box
Examples of front-end labels
This is done via the labels settings → Restricted Shortcode section.
It's important to notify both the admin and users when new subscriptions are active. The WordPress Pay Per Post plugin always sends notifications to users and you can the admin alerts on or off.
Click on the Notifications tab.
Notifications settings
1) For The Customer
Choose the email subject and message
Email notification template for the customer
2) For the Admin
Enable/disable, choose the email(s) to notify (separated by comma). Finally, also configure both subject and message.
Email notification template for the admin
Using Placeholders
In both cases (customer or admin) you can customize the email subject and template using placeholders:
The admin can track all active subscriptions at any time.
Navigate to the Admin Dashboard → CM Pay Per Posts Pro → Subscriptions.
Navigation to the Subscriptions Dashboard
This page displays the subscriptions that have been added. Subscriptions are listed by pricing group, post, user, start, end, duration, points and action.
Managing subscriptions
TIP: Manual Subscription
Add New - Click the Add New button to add a new subscription to the page. This option support adding a subscription manually.
You need to indicate a post which already have a pricing group assigned to it, indicate the username and the duration. Adding a manual subscription let you also add non paying users to the subscription.
Adding new subscription manually
Letting Users Manage Their Subscriptions (Shortcode)
Each user can also view his active and past subscription. You need to create a page which includes the shortcode [cmppp-subscriptions] .
Shortcode for letting users manage their subscriptions
With the WordPress Pay Per Post plugin, you can restrict any post type, even the ones managed by other plugins. This means that you can restrict content from other plugins if it uses said post types.
We Can't Guarantee Compatibility
Note that is a general rule. We cannot guarantee compatibility with all third-party plugins, as that involves code we don't control.
The technical requirements are:
Plugin must register post_types - To show the post type in Pay Per Post's settings
Plugin's custom type must be editable from the Back-End - To enable the subscription metabox
Plugin must use the "the_content" filter on the Front-End - Only this content will be restricted
Choosing Post Types to Restrict
Head to General tab → Post types section. There, choose which post types to support.
This list fetches all post_types. If you can't find one related to a plugin, it means the plugin doesn't register its content as post_types.
You can restrict the number of purchases for your posts. This means that only a set number of users can make a purchase.
Set Up
To limit the number of users that can make the purchase, navigate to the plugin settings. Under the General tab, you can find the section Post Availability.
Post availability settings
To activate, set the option Allow to set limit the post availability for users to Yes. Under Max user number limit, set the maximum number of users you want your post to be available for. Set the number above 0, because if you set it at 0 or below, there will be no limit.
If you want to show a message to your users once the maximum number has been reached, set Allow to set message with limit to Yes.
TIP: Modifying The Label
To set a custom message once the maximum number of users has been reached, from the labels tab. Under it, navigate to the Post Availability section.
You can set a general message, or a message that states the number of buyers that have purchased your post.
Post availability labels
Example
Example of the restricted post with limited number of purchases
Showing Availability via Shortcode
You can show if a post is available or not to the current user by using the shortcode [cmppp_availability postid="ID"]
The plugin will not work or will require special settings when used together with themes that don't implement the "the_content" hook/filter. They are a minority.
So far, this has been reported in the Elementor Page Builder and some other themes.
Elementor Fix
To block a page that uses the Elementor page builder, it's necessary to both:
