You can protect an entire WordPress “Category” in your WP blog, simply by adding the “Permalink” of that category to a “Product”, just like you would protect the permalink of a blog post or page.
Please note that on the DAP Product page, you will only see the permalinks to Pages and Posts, not Categories. So the category permalink is something you would have to figure out (it’s very easy) as shown below, and then directly add that permalink to the DAP Product.
Figuring Out The Category Permalink
So, browse to your blog in your browser, visit the category that you wish to protect on your blog.
If your blog is in the root, it will look like….
http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/category/my-category-name/
If your blog is in a sub-folder called, say, “blog”, then the link will look like…
http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/blog/category/my-category-name/
So copy the link that you see in your browser (this is the “permalink” for that category), log in as DAP Admin, and add it to one of your products. That’s it.
Just protecting the category will protect all posts assigned to that category, be it posts that were already assigned to it, or posts that you will be creating in the future and assigning to that category.
IMPORTANT
When you add an entire category of posts to DAP, then all posts in that category – posts currently in that category, as well posts you will be adding in the future under that category – will all become automatically protected.
So if you add the entire category to DAP and then configure that “link” to be available on a certain day, or date, then remember that ALL posts within that category will automatically become available on that day or date.
WARNING
Also remember that because you are adding an entire category of posts, and not individual posts, you won’t be able to configure individual posts within that category to be dripped at various times. Only the “category” link can be configured to be dripped, and not the individual posts within it.
ALTERNATIVE
Please note that when you protect a category in DAP, then all posts that are assigned to this category will drip at the same time. It’s not possible to drip the category itself on “Day #X” and then drip the posts within on different days. It’s ALL OR NOTHING when it comes to category protection.
So if you want a much more tighter control on the dripping, then better to use Pages and Sub-Pages in WordPress.
Since you would anyway need to set up a dripping “day” for each piece of content, it is actually highly recommended that you drip them as Pages and not posts.
So let’s say you create 3 pages:
http://yoursite.com/Month-01
http://yoursite.com/Month-02
http://yoursite.com/Month-03
Then there would be sub-pages (Pages which have above Pages as the Parent) under each of these, like…
http://yoursite.com/Month-01/Week-01
http://yoursite.com/Month-01/Week-02
http://yoursite.com/Month-01/Week-03
Etc.
So then you can drip a Page on Day #1 (say), and then drip the sub-pages on Day #2, #3, etc.
That’s the easiest, best and most convenient set up, especially if you want a great deal of control over the dripping, and also don’t want anyone to see even any links or hints regarding what else is coming.
7 comments ↓
Hi Ravi, I was a customer of WMIAB way back and can attest to your expertise. I’m SO HAPPY to see you have a WordPress Membership site plugin, there is a great need for a solid one.
Anyhow, does this apply to subcategories also? So if I have a category named “tutorials” and then three subcats under it (ie: “subcat1″ “subcat2″ and “subcat3″) can I…
Have them have access to subcat1 on day one, then add subcat2 on day 7, and then subcat3 on day 14?
Hope that makes sense!
Lisa,
Good to hear from you!
Yes, you can protect sub-categories. But remember, if you protect an entire category, you can’t publicly publish your archives, because if someone who is not entitled to a category clicks on the link, they will get an empty blog page with errors.
So as long as you don’t publish the archives or category listing on your site, you can do that.
A better way is to protect individual posts, and make X posts (from one category) all available on the same day. That will have the same effect as far as your member is concerned, and you won’t have to worry about hiding any of the categories. This will work as normal.
Feel free to email me if you have more questions.
- Ravi
I’m guessing that the MORE tag function will still work as usual within each post in a protected category?
Mark,
Yes, that is correct. No changes to the “More” tag.
- Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Should this work with a section of posts that are grouped by a tag?
Such as:
http://yoursite.com/tag/example/
Best,
GA
Ravi,
Is there a way in WP 3 custom menus to have them show / hide based on access rights just like the primary menu?
BTW Loving the product.
Geoff,
No, DAP doesn’t automatically hide protected pages from WP custom menus. That happens only in regular menus.
We will try to work it into a future version.
- Ravi
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