Creating A Members-Only Area: Subdomain Questions
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Hi,
I’m thinking about possibly creating a members-only area for one of my blogs in the future, so just wanted to work out how to do it when I’m ready. I’ve had a look at the support post https://wordpress.com/support/tutorials/build-a-membership-website-tutorial/, from which I understood that I needed to have ‘members.’ or ‘login.’ at the start of the domain of ‘Site A’ (e.g. members.writingwebsite.poetry.blog).
So I tried to create a new site and typed in the domain members.writingwebsite.poetry.blog (and also login.writingwebsite.poetry.blog). However, there is a warning that comes up: ‘This domain is already mapped to a WordPress.com site.’ (However, if I put it into Google, it doesn’t exist.)
There is an option to have memberswritingwebsite.poetry.blog (without the dot between ‘members’ and the main domain). Will this still work as a subdomain, or is the dot necessary? The post seems to suggest that it is. (‘A subdomain uses a word followed by a dot […] a subdomain would be: members.mysite.com’.)
Also, do I need to make the domain name members.writingwebsite.poetry.blog or members.writingwebsite.poetry.blog.wordpress.com? In the support page it seemed to say that I needed both, but I don’t understand how to do that.Thanks!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi @writer0001, the name in this case wouldn’t matter, since you’ll be linking the two sites.
The main issue you’re running into there is that you’re trying to use a sub-subdomain, which wouldn’t be supported: someting.poetry.blog is already a subdomain, so the extra dot you’re adding is throwing it off.
You might try writingwebsite-members.poetry.blog instead, or something along those lines.
I wanted to note too, we’ve got quite an update to that tutorial. It’s pretty recent, but it might work well for you:
https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/premium-content-block/Hoping it helps!
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Thanks @supernovia! This was really helpful. I understand more now, and I’ve made the new site. I still have some questions about linking the two sites, though.
I didn’t really understand the mention of ‘CNAME’ in the original post, or the ‘Nameservers and DNS Records → DNS Records’ part (it didn’t appear for me), but this wasn’t mentioned in the more recent post. Is this still necessary, and if so, please could you explain to me how to link the two sites?
Do I need to keep the members-only website as set to private, or will I be able to publish that? From the more recent post it looks like I should publish it, but I don’t know whether that was referring to the members-only site or the page with the login area of the original site.
Will members still need to make their own WordPress account to access the members-only area, or will they be able to create their own login separate from WordPress?
Do I need to make the subscription paid for in order to have a members-only area, or can it be free? (I have a free WordPress plan, so I can’t do payments.)
Also, is there any way of making this (or anything like this) without a paid plan? At the moment I’m only using the free plan, so I wanted to know if I’d eventually have to upgrade when I use this members-only area.
Thanks again!
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Hi there,
I didn’t really understand the mention of ‘CNAME’ in the original post, or the ‘Nameservers and DNS Records → DNS Records’ part (it didn’t appear for me), but this wasn’t mentioned in the more recent post. Is this still necessary, and if so, please could you explain to me how to link the two sites?
You don’t necessarily need to fiddle with DNS settings. You can simply add a link to your main site pointing to your member-only site. You can even create a menu item pointing to that site.
Do I need to keep the members-only website as set to private, or will I be able to publish that? From the more recent post it looks like I should publish it, but I don’t know whether that was referring to the members-only site or the page with the login area of the original site.
It needs to be private so that only people you have invited (members) can view it.
Will members still need to make their own WordPress account to access the members-only area, or will they be able to create their own login separate from WordPress?
They’ll need to create a WordPress.com account to access the private site.
Do I need to make the subscription paid for in order to have a members-only area, or can it be free? (I have a free WordPress plan, so I can’t do payments.)
If you’re going to use the Premium Content Block, then you don’t even need a second site as you can make parts of your site accessible only to members. Please note that this option requires a paid plan.
Also, is there any way of making this (or anything like this) without a paid plan? At the moment I’m only using the free plan, so I wanted to know if I’d eventually have to upgrade when I use this members-only area.
To make this on a Free plan you need to have two sites. One public and one private (for your members). There’s no other way.
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Thank you so much for explaining this to me, @supernovia and @fstat! It was really helpful!
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Please could you tell me how I accept an invite request? I made a test WordPress account and sent an invite request to the private site to see if it worked, but I can’t see where to accept the request on this account.
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I’ve worked it out, thank you.
Thank you so much for explaining this to me!! It was really helpful.
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