Customizing the Member Sites experience

Edit the member homepage, navigation, checkout, and more.

You can use Member Sites to build a set of member-only pages for different communities or topics you teach. Use this guide to learn how to customize the Member Sites experience for your members.

Global settings

The Member Sites panel includes shortcut links to all the global settings that affect your member sites.

The following options appear:

• Create member sites - Links to the Pages panel, where you can add new member sites.
• Manage members - Links to the Contacts panel, where you can view all your members, along with any Commerce customers, mailing list subscribers, and donors.
• Shortcuts - Use the links in this section to access the Commerce features you’ll use to sell memberships to your member sites. Click Customer notifications to customize member email notifications.
• Member navigation - Control the navigation menu that appears to members when they log into their customer accounts on your site.

Customize member homepages

The member homepage is the landing page for a member site. Use this page to welcome your members and link out to the rest of the pages in that site. Links to a member site's homepage automatically appear in:

• Membership purchase confirmation emails
• Member site welcome emails
• The Memberships section of a member’s customer account panel

The first page you add to a member site automatically becomes that site's homepage. To set another page as the member homepage:

1. Open the Pages panel.
2. Under Member Sites, locate the appropriate member site.
3. Hover over the title for the page you want to set as your member homepage and click .
4. In the page settings, scroll down and click Set as member homepage.
5. Click Confirm in the pop-up, then click Close.
6. Your new member homepage will have a house icon next to its title.

Note: Navigation links and pages within portfolio pages (version 7.1) or index pages (version 7.0) can't be set as the homepage.

If you delete the member homepage or remove it from its member site, the homepage changes. The first page listed under that member site in the Pages panel automatically becomes the homepage. If there aren’t any other pages, a 404 error appears for members when they try to access their members-only content.

Style member homepages

You can customize the page’s design using style tweaks in the Design panel. To learn more, visit Making style changes.

Customize member navigation

When a member logs in to their customer account, a new navigation menu appears, listing the gated pages in that member site. Choose how you want this member navigation to appear:

1. Open the Member Sites panel.
2. Click Member navigation.
3. Choose where you want the member navigation to appear.
4. Click Save.

What member navigation options you have depends on your site’s version.

Customize checkout

Create a custom checkout form for customers to complete when paying for a pricing plan. Use this form to collect information or comments from your customers and display your Terms of Service.

Keep in mind, the custom checkout form won't appear for free member sites, as members won't go through the checkout process when they sign up.

Note: You can only create a single custom checkout form for your site. If you sell products or services as well as pricing plans, the same form appears at checkout for customers, regardless of what they're purchasing.

Customize customer email notifications

Customize the following automatic email notifications sent to your members:

• Welcome email - The email a new member receives after signing up for one of your pricing plans. By default, this email welcomes members, invites them to sign in, and links to the member site homepage.
• Cancellation email - The email a member receives after their membership is canceled, either because you remove a member from your member site, delete the pricing plan from your site, or cancel your billing plan.
• Customer account emails - Enabling Member Sites also enables customer accounts by default. Customize the emails members receive after creating an account or resetting their account password.
• Opt-in confirmation emails for free member sites - The email a member receives when they sign up for a free pricing plan. Members must click a link in this email to confirm their interest in receiving email communications.

Learn more about all the email types members receive, and how to customize them in Customer email notifications.

Customize a paywall

When you add a member site to a pricing plan, the pages of the member site are gated behind a paywall. Visitors will see the paywall if they aren’t:

• Logged into their customer account
• A member of the member site’s pricing plan

To learn more about customizing and styling your paywalls, visit Paywalls and pricing plans.