Your first 15 minutes
OMembership ships with safe defaults so you can launch a paid site without writing a line of PHP. This page walks you through the first session.
1. Pick a portal theme
Open Settings -> Portal. Eight themes are bundled (Indigo, Aurora, Obsidian, Atelier, Penelope, Nebula, Compass, Prism). Theme picks live in general -> portal.theme and update the auto-created /members page instantly.
2. Create your first plan
Plans -> Add new. Plans support four shapes:
| Type | When to use |
|---|---|
free | Open signups, optionally with an email verification gate |
one_time | Lifetime access via a single Woo purchase |
subscription | Recurring access (Woo Subscriptions or OSubscribe) |
team | One purchaser, many seats |
Plus three visibility flags: public, invite, application. Paid plans auto-create a hidden WooCommerce product on save; the price you set goes through OMembership_Plans::price_for() and supports multiple pricing tiers under one plan.
3. Gate some content
Access -> Add rule. A rule binds a plan to a resource. Scope types supported: post, cpt, category, tag, taxonomy, url, product, download, block. Mode picks from block, teaser, blur, replace. The pre-rendered decision cache lasts 5 minutes per (user, scope) pair to keep template renders cheap.
4. Test the paywall
Log out, visit a gated post, and you'll be redirected to the /paywall page that activation seeded. Hit the back-office Members screen to grant yourself test access without going through checkout.
5. Wire engagement (optional)
The Engagement engine (E6) is enabled by default. Open Settings -> Engagement to toggle:
lifecycle_enabled- hourly welcome / onboarding nudge / renewal / win-back sweepsbadges_enabled- five default badges are seeded on activation (welcome, first-lesson, first-course, conversation, helping-hand)leaderboard_enabled- off by default, surfaced via shortcode
The absorbed auth surface (social login, magic links, 2FA, custom auth pages) sits under Engagement -> Auth with provider keys, OAuth callback URLs, and 2FA enforcement options.
6. Hand off to your members
The seeded pages are ready to share:
/paywall-[omembership_paywall]/members-[omembership_portal](the dashboard)/directory-[omembership_directory]
Themes can override every section by hooking omem/portal/sections and templates resolve through OMembership_Templates::render() (so dropping portal.php into your theme's omembership/ folder takes precedence).