Gravity Forms Member Access Premium Add-on Setup Guide

Member Access joins Gravity Forms and the free WP-Members plugin. A feed on your form creates or finds a safe WordPress account, saves the answers in your WP-Members fields, activates the account when registration is moderated and gives the memberships you choose. Three more feed types remove a membership, react when a member is activated, and lock a form so that only members can open it. Use it for a member sign-up, a paid plan form, a cancellation form, an onboarding record, or a members-only support or booking form.

What You Get

• A feed called Register / update WP-Members member. When the form is sent, or when its payment is completed, it makes or finds the account, saves the fields and gives the memberships.
• Memberships given with the WP-Members API, so WP-Members keeps its own records and runs its own hooks. A membership that expires gets its expiry from the plan, a number of days, a fixed date or a date in the form.
• Answers saved in the custom fields of WP-Members, each checked against the field type and its options.
• Optional activation of the new account when WP-Members has moderated registration switched on.
• Fixed memberships ticked in the feed, or the memberships a member picks in a choice field. Form choices filled with your memberships.
• A feed called Remove a membership, for a cancellation form.
• A feed called When a member is activated, which adds an entry to a form, sends its notifications, or both.
• A feed called Form gate, which hides a form, replaces it with a message, or refuses the send unless the visitor holds a membership.
• Merge tags for the memberships, their expiry and any WP-Members field, conditional logic, entry notes, a clear notice when WP-Members is missing, and no outside requests.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
• Gravity Forms 2.9 or newer.
• The free WP-Members plugin, version 3.5.3 or newer, with memberships switched on. This version was tested with WP-Members 3.5.8.1.
• A GravityExtra license key.

Install and Activate

1. Install and activate Gravity Forms and the free WP-Members plugin if they are not active yet.
2. In WP-Members, open the Options tab and turn on memberships, then create your memberships under Memberships.
3. Upload and activate the Gravity Forms Member Access Premium Add-on.
4. Go to Forms → Settings → Member Access, enter your license key and press Activate.

If WP-Members is missing or too old, a notice on the Forms screens says so. Your forms keep working and the entries are saved, but no member is registered. If memberships are switched off in WP-Members, a feed still registers the account, writes an error note and gives no membership.

Add a Register Feed

Open Form Settings → Member Access, press Add New and keep the action on Register / update WP-Members member.

Account Safety

The add-on is careful with accounts, because a form is open to everyone.

• It never takes over another account. An email that already belongs to a user is refused by default. When you allow it, the account only gains the membership: its name, password, role, WP-Members fields and activation stay as they are.
• It never hands out a role that can manage the site or content. Administrator, Editor, Author and every role with the capability to edit users, posts or pages, upload files, install plugins or manage the site are refused, even if a feed was saved with one.
• A username that is taken or not valid creates nothing. A typed username is cleaned of spaces and markup.
• A logged-in member is registered directly, with no new account. A logged-in only feed skips visitors and says so in the entry notes.
• Only an account the feed created is activated. An existing account is never activated by this add-on.

WP-Members Fields

In the WP-Members fields section every custom field you made in WP-Members has a row, and you pick the form field that fills it. The answers are checked before they are saved. A choice field accepts only an option that exists in WP-Members, by its value or its label. A check box saves the value you set for it. A multiple choice field saves the valid options with the delimiter WP-Members uses. Text is cleaned, an email must be an email, a link must be a web address and a number must be a number.

Fields that WP-Members keeps for itself are not in the list: passwords, files, images, hidden values and the membership field. A field whose meta key is used by WordPress for capabilities, sessions or the activation flag is never offered or written, even when someone named a custom field that way. The core fields, such as the name and the email, are set in the Account fields section.

Activation With Moderated Registration

When registration is moderated in WP-Members, a new account cannot log in until it is activated. Tick Activate in the feed and the add-on activates the account it just made, with the WP-Members activation function, so the WP-Members hooks run. When registration is not moderated the account can log in at once and the entry note says there was nothing to activate.

WP-Members sets a new password while it activates an account when its own registration form has no password field. If the member typed a password in your form, the add-on puts that password back after the activation and does not send the WP-Members approval e-mail, because that e-mail would carry a password the member never uses. If no password was typed, you can let WP-Members send its approval e-mail, or let the standard WordPress e-mail with the password link do the job.

Memberships and Expiry

With This list, tick the memberships and everyone who sends the form gets them. With A choice field, pick a drop down, radio buttons, check boxes, a multi select or a product field. The answers may be the membership id, its slug or its title, so a choice field you typed by hand works too. Only memberships that exist in WP-Members can be given. A draft, an unknown name or a membership outside your ticked list is refused and the entry gets an error note.

A membership picked in a field is given only when the entry is paid. This protects you from a free form that hands out paid plans. If your form is free on purpose, tick Free pick. A membership you tick in the feed is your own decision and is always given.

The expiry applies to memberships that expire in WP-Members. A membership that never expires is simply given. For the others you can keep the period of the plan, which also renews an existing membership by that period, or set a number of days from now, a fixed date, or the date in a form field. A date in the past, or a number of days that is not a whole number from 1 to 3650, is refused with a note and the account is still registered.

A WP-Members membership can require a role. The add-on never hands out a role to satisfy it. If the member lacks the required role, the membership is still given and the entry note says that WP-Members will give access only when the role matches.

List the memberships in the form

In the Choices section pick a field. Its choices are replaced by your WP-Members memberships, and the value of each choice is the membership id. You can list every membership or only the ones you ticked. A new membership appears in the form without editing it.

Payments

The add-on does not take payments. If your payment add-on has the option to run feeds only after the payment is completed, tick Register or update only when payment is completed in the feed. The account is made, the fields are saved and the membership is given when the payment is complete, not before.

Remove Access

Change the action to Remove a membership to build a cancellation form. This feed works only for the logged-in member and only on memberships that member holds. Tick the memberships to remove, or let the member pick one in a choice field, with an optional list of the memberships that may be picked. A visitor, an unknown membership, a draft and a membership the member does not hold change nothing, and the entry note says why. Nothing else about the account changes.

When a Member Is Activated

Change the action to When a member is activated. This feed does nothing when the form is sent. It runs when WP-Members activates a member, whether an administrator did it from the users screen, the member followed an activation link, or the register feed of this add-on did it.

• Add an entry to the form for the member. Map the member email, name, first name, last name and username, the titles of the memberships the member holds, and the date. The entry is owned by the member.
• Send notifications of the form that use the event WP-Members: member activated. Gravity Forms needs an entry for its merge tags, so with the entry option off the entry exists only while the notifications are sent.
• Conditional logic can look at the values that would go in the entry.

Use it for a welcome message, an onboarding record for your team or a notice to a manager. An activation counts once while one request runs, so a hook that fires twice makes one entry, and a later activation counts again.

Form Gate

Change the action to Form gate to show a form only to members.

• Replace the form with a message, hide the form completely, or show the form but refuse the submission.
• Tick the memberships that give access. A visitor who holds any one of them gets in. With none ticked, any logged-in member gets in.
• An expired membership does not open the gate, and a membership that needs a role needs the role too, as WP-Members decides.
• Write your own message, or leave it empty for a standard one. A visitor who is not logged in also gets a log-in link.
• Users who can manage the site always see the form, unless you untick the administrator option.

The check is also made when the form is sent, so a hidden form cannot be posted by hand. If WP-Members is missing, a gated form stays closed for everyone except administrators. If the license is not active, gates and all other feeds do nothing.

Merge Tags and Entry Notes

They work in confirmations and notifications of the same form and appear in the merge tag list of the form editor. Each entry gets a note for every step: the account that was made, the fields that were saved, each membership that was given or removed, and the reason for anything that was not.

For Developers

The add-on gives memberships with wpmem_set_user_product, removes them with wpmem_remove_user_product, reads them with wpmem_get_user_memberships and wpmem_get_memberships, and checks access with wpmem_user_has_access. It activates accounts with wpmem_activate_user, and listens to the wpmem_user_activated action.

Limits to Know

• The add-on does not take payments. Use a payment add-on and the option to run only when the payment is completed.
• It does not create memberships or WP-Members fields. Create them in WP-Members first.
• A remove feed works for the logged-in member only. It cannot remove a membership from another account.
• WP-Members decides the access rules, and the gate asks WP-Members.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a paid WP-Members extension?

No. The add-on works with the free WP-Members plugin from wordpress.org.

Will WP-Members still send its own e-mails?

Only when you ask. WP-Members sends its approval e-mail when you tick that option and no password was typed. Otherwise the standard WordPress e-mail with the password link is used, if you leave it ticked.

Can a visitor give themselves a paid membership?

Not through a choice field: a membership picked in a field is given only for a paid entry, unless you allow a free pick. A fixed list is your own decision, so use it only for forms that really give the access away or that you approve first.

What happens when the email already has an account?

By default nothing: the entry gets an error note. If you allow it, only the membership is added to that account.

Does it send data outside my site?

No. Everything happens on your own site. Only the license check talks to gravityextra.com, when you press Activate.