Groups Restrict Categories

Groups Restrict Categories features access restrictions for categories, tags and other WordPress taxonomies, including support for custom post types and taxonomies.

This extension based on Groups is useful if you want to restrict access to whole categories and their related posts. Beyond categories, it also allows to control access to other taxonomies like tags or those that are provided by third-party extensions in the form of custom post types and taxonomies. Menu

If you are using the popular WooCommerce, you can use this extension to restrict access to products by Product Categories or Product Tags. This can be useful if you have certain products which only specific customer groups should be able to purchase, like exclusive products and packages for wholesale and distributors.

Documentation

Read more about how this plugin is used in the Documentation.

Download

This premium extension is available in the Shop.

Screenshots

New access restriction options

Edit Category

Enabling access restrictions by taxonomy

Taxonomies

216 Responses to Groups Restrict Categories

  1. Raj August 17, 2016 at 12:54 pm #

    Hello. This is a pre-purchase enquiry. With this plugin, will I be able to show a product to an unregistered user, but hide it from a registered user? I know I can do it the other way around.

    We have some products that are only to be visible to general public, but excluded from view for registered users.

    • antonio August 21, 2016 at 7:47 am #

      Hi Raj,
      sorry, you can limit the access to groups, but not to guest users.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.

  2. Richard Powell June 15, 2016 at 11:43 pm #

    Line 368 of FILE: class-groups-restrict-categories-taxonomy-admin.php

    IN CATEGORIES lib/admin/

    NEEDS a fix

    code should read

    if ( $capability == Groups_Capability::read( $read_cap ) ) {

    NOT

    if ( $capability = Groups_Capability::read( $read_cap ) ) {

    Currently all access restrictions in a category are remove if you delete any single capability.

    • antonio June 16, 2016 at 5:53 pm #

      Hi Richard,
      We are having a look at this.
      Thank you very much for the contribution.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.

  3. Megan June 15, 2016 at 8:22 pm #

    Help! All of my category Access Restrictions were erased when I removed a single capability. The capability had NOTHING to do with any categories. I just duplicated the situation and got the same result.

  4. Stephen May 3, 2016 at 12:28 pm #

    Hi,

    I saw someone asked a question similar, but the answer didn’t quite answer my question:

    I am using the groups plugin for a company-wide intranet-type site. It is a large organization and we would have some people set up as authors or editors who could only edit their own pages (Personnel authors would only be able to EDIT certain post categories and pages, though they could SEE all the pages and posts from all departments). Is this possible using Groups Restrict Categories?

    • antonio May 6, 2016 at 6:13 am #

      Hi Stephen,
      The access restriction is for view and edit, so if you restrict a page/post to a Group, only the users of this group could view and/or edit (if they have correct role) the page/post. So you can not do it.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.

  5. Martijn April 28, 2016 at 3:03 pm #

    Hi,

    After reading the information about this product, I think this is what we need for our site, but I would like to know if someone has tried this/had something like this working.

    We want to limit access to agenda/event items, were certain groups have access to different event categories. And that the other categories are not shown & inaccessible.
    We use all-in-one event calendar from time.ly and we have different categories of events. so we want group A to be able to see the general events category & the group A specific events. and group B to see the general events and group B specific events. etc.

    By what I read about this extention, it is possible, I just like to know if anyone has any experience with this, or thinks that this might not work.

    Kind regards,

    Martijn

    • Kento May 1, 2016 at 9:17 am #

      Hi,

      I haven’t tested it with their plugin but if they use regular custom post types and taxonomies then it should work as expected.

      Cheers

  6. bärliner January 15, 2016 at 11:09 am #

    Hi Kento,

    I’m using the plugin and it works great with my Woocommerce website.

    However I’ve now a problem with the “Search & Filter” plugin to show all restricted categories in the drop-down menu of the search form.
    Unfortunately I see in the menu only the non-restricted categories.

    I’m allready overriding the filters and in the search results I can see title and category of my restricted posts/categories but I’m unable to override it for the plugin’s search form.

    Any help would be much appreciated

    Thanks

    • Kento January 19, 2016 at 12:04 pm #

      Hi,

      I’m not sure in which context you would like them to appear, so if you could clarify your use case a bit? If the categories don’t appear for an unauthorized user then it’s behaving as it should. Do you want to show those categories even though the user doesn’t have access to them?

      Cheers

      • bärliner January 21, 2016 at 11:20 am #

        Hi,

        I try to clarify my problem. I’m using the “Search & Filter” plugin and I published a search form on a page using the shortcode provided by the plugin. I have overwritten the group-restrict-category restrictions with remove_filter on this page and on the search results page (I tested it and it’s working), however in the search form the “Categories” dropdown menu doesn’t shows the protected categories (on both pages).

        I would like to show the protected categories even though the user doesn’t have access to them and I thought that was enough to override the restrictions on this page but “Search & Filter” seems not to be affected.

        Thanks

        • Kento January 22, 2016 at 12:31 pm #

          Hi,

          Ok thanks. In this case I think it’s best you ask that plugin’s author for help, maybe they provide a filter or can give you directions on how they retrieve the results that are displayed – even though you remove the filter, it’s possible that it’s still active before you remove it and during the query that plugin uses to retrieve the results.

          Cheers

          • bärliner January 22, 2016 at 1:26 pm #

            Ok thanks

  7. Robin January 14, 2016 at 9:44 am #

    Hi,

    We are using the Groups plugin to restrict woocommerce products. But we have the products in categories and now we want to restrict the whole category. We have seen that this is possible with this plugin, but what we want to know is, if the category that we restrict for a certain group is also be hidden. Because with the groups plugin now somebody sees the product category with a count of products in it, but when he or she clicks on it it is restricted with a at that moment strange message. What we want is that the restricted category is totally be hidden and only being visible for a specific group.

    Hope somebody can confirm this plugin will do the above?

    Regards,

    Robin

    • Kento January 14, 2016 at 12:16 pm #

      Hi Robin,

      If you restrict a category, it will protect the products in that category and if the category page is accessed, it will show “No products were found matching your selection.” – i.e. the category page itself is visible but no products in it will be shown. If you use the “WooCommerce Product Categories” widget, the protected product categories will not show up (because they appear as empty due to the products being protected).

      I hope that clarifies how it works but feel free to ask if you need to clarify it further.

      Cheers

      • Robin January 14, 2016 at 12:35 pm #

        Hi,

        So if i’m correct this plugin does not do anything else then the Groups plugin separately but there we need to set the attribute to every product we add, and with the category plugin we only need to set it on the category?
        We do not use the widgets, but we use the store page of Woocommerce, so i think this plugin won’t be helpful for us. Or do i miss something?

        regards,

        Robin

        • Kento January 15, 2016 at 8:43 am #

          Hi Robin,

          If you have many products in the category, restricting by category is more convenient. But for just a few, you wouldn’t need it if the extension in whole doesn’t provide any additional benefits to your deployment.

          Cheers

  8. William December 29, 2015 at 1:29 am #

    Yes it works but to meet my clients requirments, I will have to edit the code. Thank you!

  9. William December 17, 2015 at 4:31 pm #

    Hi! I’d like to know if there’s a way to solve my problem. I use Groups, Groups Restrict Categories and WooCommerce.

    Example:

    I have these categories each linked to a group with the same name.

    -Cat 1 (linked to Group 1)
    — Cat 2 (linked to Group 2)
    — Cat 3 (linked to Group 3)

    The user is assigned to group 1 and 2, so he have access to products in cat 1 and 2.

    However, if a product is in cat 2 and 3, the user won’t be able to see the product in cat 2.

    Is there a way I can put a product in many categories in that case?

    Thank you! 🙂

    • Kento December 17, 2015 at 5:41 pm #

      Hi William,

      Where a product belongs to several protected categories, the user must have all the capabilities that are used to restrict access. If the user does not have one or more, access will be blocked. In this case, you could create a group for specific users which grants access to both categories 2 and 3.

      Cheers

      • William December 17, 2015 at 6:51 pm #

        Thank you! Do you think it’s a functionnality that will be developped in the future? Or, do you know how I can edit the files to meet my equirements?

        • Kento December 18, 2015 at 10:15 pm #

          It’s possible but to solve your case without having to hack any of the code, I’d rather recommend using the approach with groups that have the required capabilities assigned. I think it will be much easier to manage. Can you give that a try and let me know if it works for you?

  10. Peter November 11, 2015 at 12:07 pm #

    Hi,
    I have a site with a huge problem.

    Setup with Groups, 404 Group, Groups WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions

    1: When a user register (using the Woo-Commerce account page) the user is only required to enter a username and a email (where did the password go?)

    Then an emails set to “reset” password – The user can then change the generated pass – nada else!
    So far so good…

    2: Then he pops in to buy a membership in the WooCommerce shop – The buy adds a GROUP settings to his account and grants him acces to the “Protected area” … BUT the nick name and username is identically (default in WP)… This restricts his access to the video area he bought?

    3: If we write a LONG “Follow this steps” to teach the user to set his nickname and username different he can’t see this info in his profile? (WooCommerce has a “Customer Account” page where nickname is NOT shown.

    4: How do we avoid this “same nick as username” issue?
    5: And even better – could we get the password back on the regis page so new users can choose this them self!?

    We are running IThemes Pro and a lot is done not to mess up user accounts and fields etc. But if any known issues could be relevant please tell

    Best regards

    Peter

    • antonio November 16, 2015 at 7:57 pm #

      Hi Peter,
      1.- It is not related with the plugins. In Woocommerce->Settings:Account you can configure this.
      2.- If the user join to a group, then he can access the contents.
      3, 4.- Sorry, really I don’t know the relationship with Groups.
      5.- Have a look at point 1.
      Kind Regards,
      Antonio B.

  11. Mark November 5, 2015 at 11:26 am #

    Looking at buying this plugin but have a question.
    The posts I am protecting sometimes contain an uploaded PDF. Are these PDFs protected along with the post?

    • Kento November 5, 2015 at 2:57 pm #

      Hi Mark,

      No but you could use Groups File Access instead. Note that this would not protect them either but provides an alternative to have protected files by group.

      Cheers

  12. Eliot October 29, 2015 at 10:06 pm #

    Hi – Several links to documentation:
    http://www.itthinx.com/documentation/groups-restrict-categories/

    keep getting redirected to:
    http://www.itthinx.com/plugins/groups-restrict-categories/ .

    If there is separate documentation available, I’m not seeing it.
    Thanks!

  13. Andrew July 30, 2015 at 3:22 pm #

    Hi Kento,

    Im using groups restrict access for a subscription website. i have allowed excerpts, images to display on pages until clicked on using the following code:

    // If the unsubscribed user is looking at any of the page’s listed the user will be able to view the list of post excerpts
    if ( is_page(‘page-name-1’) || is_page (‘page-name-2’) || is_page (‘page-name-3’) || is_page (‘page-name-4’) || is_page (‘page-name-5’) || is_page (‘page-name-6’) || is_page (‘page-name-7’) || is_page (‘page-name-8’) || is_page (‘page-name-9’) || is_page (‘page-name-10’) || is_page (‘page-name-11’) || is_page (‘page-name-12’) || is_page (‘page-name-1’) || is_category (‘category-1’) || is_category (‘category-2’) ) {

    // Remove the Groups_Post_Access filters
    remove_filter( ‘posts_where’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘posts_where’ ), 10, 2 );
    remove_filter( ‘the_posts’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘the_posts’ ), 1, 2 );
    remove_filter( ‘get_the_excerpt’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘get_the_excerpt’ ), 1 );
    remove_filter( ‘the_content’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘the_content’ ), 1 );
    remove_filter( ‘posts_where’, array( ‘Groups_Restrict_Categories’, ‘posts_where’ ), 10 );
    remove_filter( ‘get_pages’, array( ‘Groups_Restrict_Categories’, ‘get_pages’ ) );
    remove_filter( ‘the_posts’, array( ‘Groups_Restrict_Categories’, ‘the_posts’ ), 1 );
    remove_filter( ‘get_the_excerpt’, array( ‘Groups_Restrict_Categories’, ‘get_the_excerpt’ ) );
    remove_filter( ‘the_content’, array( ‘Groups_Restrict_Categories’, ‘the_content’ ) );
    }
    }

    However this does not include the sidebar widgets that I have on posts. Is it possible to include widgets in the above code, for example I tried is_active_widget (‘widget-id’) and the_widget (‘widget-id’) but neither worked. Is there a plugin widget tag that can be used?

    Any help would be appreciated… its a real humdinger! 🙁

    Thanks

    A

    • kento August 11, 2015 at 1:48 pm #

      Hi Andrew,

      Please have a look at my Widgets Control, you’ll see how it shows widgets conditionally and can use the code adapted to your purposes.

      Hope that helps 😉

      Cheers

  14. Max Ziebell July 28, 2015 at 4:39 pm #

    My client bought Groups Restrict Categories and after activating it … the content is gone (wp-content). All of it… what a re we doing wrong?

    • antonio July 31, 2015 at 2:34 pm #

      Hi Max,
      Have you checked your debug.log file for any errors?
      If debugging is not enabled, you can add these lines in your wp-config.php file

      define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
      define(‘WP_DEBUG_LOG’, true);

      if errors exist a file called debug.log inside your wp-content folder will be created.
      You can share the debug.log content using pastebin.com
      Regards,
      Antonio B.

  15. mnsaints July 15, 2015 at 5:22 pm #

    With this plugin is possible to limit a role ( Editor, Author) or group to create and edit posts of one certain category?
    The same would can be done to custom posts and custom taxonomies?

    • kento July 15, 2015 at 10:20 pm #

      Hi, thanks for asking but the plugin works for groups, not with roles.

  16. INNOVA July 2, 2015 at 2:04 pm #

    Hello, will this extension allow to restrict admin access to categories ?

    • antonio July 2, 2015 at 3:17 pm #

      Hi Innova,
      with Groups you can do it.
      Creates a new group, and add the ‘manage_categories’ capability to this group, then all users in this group will can manage the categories.
      Regards,
      Antonio B.

  17. Angie Smith June 16, 2015 at 2:32 pm #

    Hello,
    I am looking for a plugin to make my (woocommerce) wholesale products only visible to my wholesale customers and NOT visible through search by my retail customers. Would this plug-in allow me to do that?

    • antonio June 19, 2015 at 10:47 am #

      Hi Angie,
      using Groups plugin you can do it. Be sure you have selected ‘Product’ in Groups->Options. Then you can restrict your products to groups.
      Regards,
      Antonio B.

      • Guy June 19, 2015 at 2:13 pm #

        We figured it out a couple days ago.. thanks. -Angie

        • antonio June 19, 2015 at 2:17 pm #

          Perfect 😉

  18. Marcio May 27, 2015 at 3:24 pm #

    Hey, I want that clients from certain areas in my country can’t access some products in my woocommerce shop, can I do that?

    • antonio May 31, 2015 at 8:36 am #

      Hi Marcio,
      Groups plugin restrict content to groups. If you need to restrict by areas, first you need to add the user to groups according to the area (this feature is not available, maybe with Groups User Chooses you can do it).
      Once the user is in the correct group then you can restrict the access to products per groups.
      Regards,
      Antonio B.

  19. Liz May 8, 2015 at 8:16 am #

    Hi we just bought the plugin and according to the documentation, in order to auto update the plugin we must head on to the Service Key page. Can you please give me the link for the Service Key page?

    “To enable automatic updates for plugins, you must visit the Service Key page to obtain a key and install the Itthinx Updates plugin.”

  20. Chris May 4, 2015 at 2:20 pm #

    Is there a way to restrict posts using an “or” restriction instead of an “and” restriction?

    For example, we are using this with a Woocommerce store. There is a product that is in 2 categories: “Category A” and “Category B”. We have restricted “Category A” products to members of “Category A” Group. We have restricted “Category B” products to members of “Category B” group. We would like that product to be visible if a user is a member of Category A or Category B. Right now it seems like they have to be a part of BOTH A & B.

    Can you point me to a section of the code where we can change this to an “either/or” option?

    • kento May 10, 2015 at 6:25 pm #

      Hi Chris,

      In lib/core/class-groups-restrict-categories.php change it so that the method public static function user_can_read( $post_id, $user_id = null ) initializes the default result to false

      $result = false;

      and in the loop change the lines to read:

      if ( self::user_can_read_term( $user_id, $term->term_id ) ) {
      $result = true;
      break;
      }

      I hope that helps meanwhile, we should really have this built into the plugin at least as an option.

      Cheers

      • Chris May 26, 2015 at 6:20 pm #

        It didn’t seem to fix anything and it also broke the checkout and login functions of Woocommerce.

        • kento May 27, 2015 at 11:40 am #

          Hi Chris,

          Also with the latest version these changes would have to be revised. In any case, I’d rather recommend to use another approach until this is eventually available as a standard feature.

          Instead of restricting by category A or B, if a user should be able to see products of any of those two categories, remove the restrictions for categories A and B and use a third category to impose restrictions on products in category A or B.

          Cheers

  21. La Cho May 4, 2015 at 2:12 pm #

    Hello,
    I hope You can help us with this.:)

    We use Essential grid from Theme Punch as a woocommerce grid in our website.
    We want to integrate some membership services. The plugins from woocommerce are quite expensive though.

    To not purchase something vain, the following question appear:

    If premium member is allowed to see product category “Lux”, but is not allowed to see product category “Cheap”, and we have a grid using as a source both categories, this member will see what?

    FYI
    The restrictions will be managed through the following woocommerce compatible plugins:
    Groups Woocommerce
    Groups Gravity Forms
    Groups Subscriptions
    Gravity Forms Developer
    Groups Restrict Categories

    • kento May 10, 2015 at 10:23 am #

      Hi,

      I can’t advise about the theme you mention, but if the theme’s template respects WordPress mechanism and filters used to obtain the products corresponding to their categories, then those restrictions would have to hold also when using the theme. You can check it with Groups alone to see if the theme works correctly with post access restrictions, at least that would be a pointer.

      Cheers

  22. Anders April 25, 2015 at 12:46 pm #

    my post disipeared 🙁 so post it again.

    Pre sale question:

    Will the groups-restrict-categories show only restricted categories in widget to assign users?

    for ex. user 1 is assigned to category 1 and category 2.

    so the category widget will only show category 1 and category 2 when that user is is signed in, and not all the categories?

    Warm regards Anders

    • kento April 25, 2015 at 1:17 pm #

      Hi Anders,

      Thanks for asking (your previous comment was still in the moderatiion queue but I’m responding to this one instead) – yes you can restrict categories and if you use the Categories widget, the viewer will see the categories according to the restrictions imposed by the plugin.

      Cheers

  23. alex April 13, 2015 at 9:56 pm #

    Hi:
    I have a WooCommerce membership site up using:
    WooCommerce
    Subscriptions
    Groups
    Groups for WooCommerce

    Does your company offer a plugin (or plugins) that will allow me to have 3 membership subscriptions but still allow ‘everyone registered’ to see all content listed in all 3 member subscriptions but Not:
    a) show the Add To Cart button

    I would like for everyone who registers (even free) to be able to see the entire contents of the site, just not be able to download or add to cart unless they have the subscription for that category.

    Thanks.

  24. Fran April 13, 2015 at 6:27 pm #

    Hello. I need this plugin for a Woocommerce site. Does the plugin get updated with new Woocommerce / WordPress updates when necessary?
    Should I pay a new license to get updated versions of the plugin?

    Thank you.

    • antonio April 14, 2015 at 7:28 am #

      Hi Fran,
      please have a look to Terms & Conditions page.
      Thanks,
      Antonio B.

      • Francisco Javier April 21, 2015 at 5:51 pm #

        Thank you, Antonio. I have just already purchased the plugin

        • kento April 21, 2015 at 7:22 pm #

          Thank you for supporting our work 🙂

  25. Cortat April 2, 2015 at 2:51 pm #

    hello, I just bought your plugin because it would save tons of time to restrict by category rather than setting the restriction on each individual post. But i have a confict because I need to show the excerpt of my protected post. Before I activated your plugin it was working fine through of this function in functions.php that removes the access restrictions on certain page, template:
    add_action(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘my_pre_get_posts’);
    function my_pre_get_posts() {

    // If the user is looking at the front page
    if ( is_page(‘blog-page’) || is_archive() || is_category() || is_front_page() ) {

    // Remove the Groups_Post_Access filters
    remove_filter( ‘posts_where’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘posts_where’ ), 10, 2 );
    remove_filter( ‘the_posts’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘the_posts’ ), 1, 2 );
    remove_filter( ‘get_the_excerpt’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘get_the_excerpt’ ), 1 );
    remove_filter( ‘the_content’, array( ‘Groups_Post_Access’, ‘the_content’ ), 1 );
    }
    }
    but once you plugin is activated, it doesn’t work anymore. It is like the category restriction overides this function. Is there to way to use your plugin and have part of the post (title, excerpt and feature images) visible ?
    Thank you anyway for this very good plugin.
    F

    • kento April 20, 2015 at 4:49 pm #

      Hi,

      Many thanks for your kind feedback on the plugin!

      GRC adds its own filters to enforce the cagegory restrictions, if you remove them in the same way as you do with the standard filters that Groups adds, it should work:

      remove_filter( 'posts_where', array( 'Groups_Restrict_Categories', 'posts_where' ), 10 );
      remove_filter( 'get_pages', array( 'Groups_Restrict_Categories', 'get_pages' ) );
      remove_filter( 'the_posts', array( 'Groups_Restrict_Categories', 'the_posts' ), 1 );
      remove_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', array( 'Groups_Restrict_Categories', 'get_the_excerpt' ) );
      remove_filter( 'the_content', array( 'Groups_Restrict_Categories', 'the_content' ) );

      I hope that helps, careful where you remove them so you don’t open up too much!

      Cheers

      • Cortat April 22, 2015 at 7:37 am #

        I’ll try that !
        Thank you very much

  26. Wouter van der Zee March 12, 2015 at 8:44 am #

    Hi!

    I’ve purchased the Groups Restrict Categories plugin but cannot login to the download section. After purchase, do I have to receive an email with login details?

    Hope you can help.

    Thanks,
    Wouter

    • antonio March 13, 2015 at 9:20 am #

      Hi,
      please have a look to your spam/junk email folder. Or visit Lost Password page.
      Regards

      • Wouter van der Zee March 16, 2015 at 1:12 pm #

        Doesn’t find it in the spam folder. Also requested a lost password email, but didn’t receive that message either. I’ve purchased the plugin via PayPal (and received a confirmation email of that). Any suggestions?

        • kento March 17, 2015 at 5:38 pm #

          The email address you indicated with your order is invalid:

          post@wouter....nl: Host or domain name not found. Name service error
          for name=mailfilter1.leaseweb.com type=A: Host not found

          Please contact support at itthinx dot com.

          • Wouter van der Zee March 20, 2015 at 10:17 am #

            Ok, I’ve send an email to support.

          • Wouter van der Zee March 24, 2015 at 9:57 am #

            Hi Kento, I send an email to support last week. Did you guys receive it? Haven’t received a reply yet. If there’s a problem with my e-mail address can you use my fallback address: zeepost at solcon dot nl. Thanks!

            • kento March 24, 2015 at 8:51 pm #

              Hi Wouter, we haven’t received anything, sorry. I’ll email you on that one …

              • Wouter March 26, 2015 at 7:41 am #

                Yep, did get the e-mail on that address. Thanks!

  27. kvnmcwebn March 5, 2015 at 5:41 pm #

    hi I’m restricting access to products with woo commerce. I want to create custom capabilities named after the customer. But when creating custom capabilities how do you assign read access to them?

    • antonio March 6, 2015 at 9:05 am #

      Hi,
      please be sure you have included these capabilities to enforce read access on posts in Groups->Options.
      Regards

  28. Pamela March 4, 2015 at 12:39 am #

    Pre-purchase Questions:
    1) I want to restrict woocommerce categories by custom user roles.
    e.g. user with “role 1” cannot see woocommerce product categories “a, b or c”;
    user with “role 2” cannot see woocommerce product categories “b, c or d”, etc. Would you please confirm this feature before my purchase?
    2) Does it support multi-language e.g. Chinese?
    3) Does it apply to menu items e.g. Under Shop menu, “role 1” user will see only product categories “a, b or c” but “role 2” user will see “b, c or d” etc?
    4) Also, is there a refund period if the plugin does not work for our case?
    Thanks!

    • kento March 9, 2015 at 4:36 pm #

      Hi Pamela,

      #1 Just to avoid any confusion: Groups doesn’t work with roles, it works with groups and so does the Groups Restrict Categories plugin. The restrictions would be per group, so for your example you could create a group that grants access to one set products and another group that grants access to another set of products.
      #2 It’s translation-ready but does not include any translation so you would have to create your required translations.
      #3 No. The products in the protected categories as outlined in #1 would not be visible but the categories if added to a menu would be.
      #4 See http://www.itthinx.com/terms-conditions/

      Cheers

  29. fiyas March 3, 2015 at 8:09 am #

    Hi,

    I would like to know if it is possible make posts visible of a specific category to specific group

    eg:-
    I have post category named announcement
    Under this category Iam creating a post.
    And I have two groups ( Red and Green ).

    Now my need is that the post created is visible to the red member only in a widget (iam using the Cherryfarmework and the widget used for displaying in footer is cherry- Resent post) . like wise those posts created visible to specific groups.

    If so what is steps that I have follow.

    Thanks in advance.
    Fiyas

    • antonio March 4, 2015 at 8:45 am #

      Hi Fiyas,
      yes, with the plugin you can restrict posts in a category by groups.
      In your case you only need to restrict the category to group ‘Red’. Then all posts in this category will be only visible to this group.
      I don’t know how CherryFramework widget works but you can test it restricting a post to a group and check if this posts is visible or not in the widget by guests.
      Regards

      • Fiyas March 4, 2015 at 11:08 am #

        Great i worked , Thnkzzzzzzzzz

        Now one more doubt ca it be restricted to a single user.
        If so how.

        Thanks
        fiyas

        • antonio March 5, 2015 at 7:06 am #

          Yes, you can create a ‘UserAGroup’, add the userA to this group and restrict the content to this group.
          cheers

  30. andrei February 23, 2015 at 8:47 pm #

    Hi, first of all many thanks for this great plugin (Groups), it works like a charm.
    I’m using it to grant access to the Member users I have in the CRM system (CiviCRM), and works great, but I´m wondering if there is a way to restrict the access to the content with conditional statements, example:
    => If users is in “group_1” AND “group_2” Then
    Grant Access
    Else
    Restrict Access
    I have two types of subscriptions, a Corporate one and another one for the users (that the Company provides) that can actually view that specific content. So every users that is an employer of a Company A will inherit the corporate subscription, but they will need both subscriptions to access the content.
    Hope you can throw a light about how could I make this possible.

    Thanks in advance.

    • kento March 9, 2015 at 1:14 pm #

      Hi Andrei,

      one way to do that is to use the access restrictions to restrict the page to group_1 and then use

      [groups_member group="group_2"]Visible to members of group_1 and group_2 only.[/groups_member]

      inside the page. Would that work for your case?

      Cheers

  31. David Hall February 20, 2015 at 3:12 pm #

    Hi, I previously (yesterday) posted a question abour the features of the Groups Restrict Categories i.e. whether the Catgory name could be viewed after restriction. I wouls really appreciate an answer today (by Noon GMT) so that I am free to work on my project over this weekend.

    Thanks.

    • antonio February 21, 2015 at 9:31 am #

      Sorry, answered.
      cheers

  32. DavidMHall February 19, 2015 at 5:59 pm #

    Hi,

    Before I purchase the Restrict Categories pluigin I need to assure myself of the following:

    1. This plugin applies to Product Categories – I use woocommerce and mystile and Groups to creat a e-commrerce web site selling products – not memberships and no blog.
    2. If the User is not registered will the product categories be 100% hidden i.e. I require that an UNREGISTERED user not only to be restricted from accessing a category but ALSO to not be abble to locate or read the category.

    Regards.

    • antonio February 21, 2015 at 9:28 am #

      Hi,
      1.- Yes, you can restrict Woocommerce Product Categories.
      2.- The unregistered user can’t see the products in this category, if you use [product_categories] shortcode the user can’t see the restricted categories, but if you have a menu item with the category or he knows the link, the user can see the item and if he click then he can see an empty category.
      cheers

      • David Hall February 23, 2015 at 5:08 pm #

        Hi Antonio,

        Thanks for your reply. When you say “(product_categories) shortcode the user can’t see the restricted categories” is this your shortcode (which comes with the Plug In) or is it Woothemes or WordPress. And please tell me where to paste the shortcode (in a page or pages for example and if so which pages). Please note that this is my first WordPress project. Thanks.

        • antonio February 24, 2015 at 7:45 am #

          Hi, this is a woocommerce shortcode

  33. Thomas February 12, 2015 at 4:32 pm #

    Hi I purchased this plug in but mispelled my email address, so I didn’t get the download. I emailed several times with my receipt number from pay pal.

    • antonio February 12, 2015 at 7:14 pm #

      Hi,
      Can you access the downloads page ?

      • Thomas February 12, 2015 at 8:11 pm #

        Hi, oh ok… got it. Thanks

      • Thomas February 13, 2015 at 7:40 pm #

        I still need the key for the itthinx updater plug in though.

        • antonio February 16, 2015 at 10:28 am #

          You can set the service key in Plugins->Itthinx Updates.
          And get the key in this page.
          cheers

          • Thomas February 17, 2015 at 5:17 pm #

            k thanks

  34. Alex February 4, 2015 at 4:33 pm #

    Hello,

    is there a way to test the extension before I buy it. I am evaluation several different access management concepts.

    Thank you
    Cheers
    Alex

    • kento February 4, 2015 at 5:34 pm #

      Hi Alex,

      If after purchasing it you’re certain that the extension does not provide the right solution to your deployment, you can request a refund assuming that you won’t be using it. We don’t insist on people paying for something they won’t use 🙂 It would be great to provide an admin test site though, I hope we can have that available for all extensions.

      Cheers

  35. Steve Powell February 3, 2015 at 8:55 am #

    hi, this is a pre-purchase enquiry – I want to have groups which are completely closed off from one another – so members of one group can post, comment and read only things in their own category (or their own tag), as if each group had separate sites. Is that possible?

    • kento February 5, 2015 at 11:52 am #

      Hi Steve,

      Thanks for asking, the Groups Restrict Categories plugin wouldn’t provide that functionality. I would either consider setting up separate sites (multisite setup) or a combination of Groups Forums and Groups Restrict Comments Pro might help you achieve the setup you’re looking for. Do you have any other requirements around this?

      Cheers

  36. Dave January 20, 2015 at 5:52 am #

    Any way to edit the default message on category posts they do not have access to?

    • kento January 26, 2015 at 11:15 am #

      The default message is the one WordPress produces when it’s a 404, you could customize the template. Another option is to use Groups 404 Redirect, please have a look.

  37. Francesco January 17, 2015 at 9:53 am #

    Hello.
    I have a problem with a woocommerce site for my customer that is a barter company.
    They can sell only to member customer.

    I need a public page (shop) with the generic categories of products (wine, food, etc..) and when a unregistred user click on a category he must be redirect to the login page.

    I have try with groups/groups woocommerce

    – if i set restricted access for the shop page the non registred user can’t see it in menu.

    – if i leave public shop page and give restricted access for the categories, then show a blank shop page without categories.

    – if i don’t restrict categories and restrict the produts then the shop page show the categories (with right numbers of product inside) and when click for enter in the category show the message “no products for your selection”

    is possibile to resolve this problem with groups restrict categories or there is a way for have a only preview of categories for unregistred user?

    regards
    Francesco

    • kento January 26, 2015 at 12:19 pm #

      Hi Francesco,

      You can restrict the categories but you would have to use custom links in a menu to make them visible for non-authorized visitors. Using Groups 404 Redirect you can then redirect them to a page where they can sign up or log in.

      Note that the restricted categories and products do not show up if an unauthorized user (logged in or not) visits the pages, this is intended.

      I hope that helps but feel free to ask if you need further help.

      Cheers

  38. Anders December 29, 2014 at 9:40 am #

    hello, i am using your group plugin just now for my woocommerce shop. i have created group access that i assign to products and different roles can only see different groups/products when they login, what is fine 🙂 i could see that you mention that Groups Restrict Categories is good for woocommerce if somebody want to create wholesale or vip shopping area e.g.

    this is what i want to create but i cant see any different from Group plugin with Groups Restrict Categories?

    Warm regards Anders

    • antonio January 2, 2015 at 9:47 am #

      Hi,
      If you have many products is an advantage, because you have not to edit one to one.
      cheers

  39. Shannon December 16, 2014 at 11:46 pm #

    Hi Kento –

    I purchased this plugin as part of a big site I’m working on using Groups. Based on your replay to Torre Kean, above, about RSS feeds still working – I thought I would be able to create an RSS email campaign that worked like this: the RSS email newsletter pulls the feed and shows the excerpt from the restricted categories posts, but then when the person clicks through, they need to log in and be a group member to read the full post (or access the category archive page).

    However, when this plugin is enabled, the entire category feed is blocked — therefore the email newsletter can’t pull any posts in at all. Is there any way around this? This is the last step in a VERY long process to get this newsletter working and I really really hope you can help me with a workaround. Thank you!

    • kento December 18, 2014 at 1:52 pm #

      Hi Shannon,

      As I’ve outlined on that above, the viewer must be logged in to be able to access the feed. The newsletter plugin would have to ‘find its way’ around the access restrictions to be able to retrieve the related posts and create the excerpts that should appear in the feed. It’s possible to do that using the API, but it would need to be done as a customization to the newsletter plugin that you are using.

      • Shannon December 18, 2014 at 10:26 pm #

        Ok bummer – we’re not using a newsletter plugin, but an RSS feed campaign from MailChimp, so that won’t work at all. Thanks for the response!

        • kento December 21, 2014 at 10:03 am #

          Would showing the excerpts on restricted posts in general be an option? If yes, then you could override some of the filters that Groups uses to restrict access.

  40. Sueli November 13, 2014 at 11:24 pm #

    Hi, will this plugin work with WordPress Catalog (https://wordpress.org/plugins/catalog/)?

    I am creating products catalogs.
    Each catalog can only be seen by a group of people.

    • antonio November 14, 2014 at 11:40 am #

      Hi,
      sorry the plugin is not compatible with WordPress Catalog.
      cheers

    • kento November 14, 2014 at 11:53 am #

      Hi Sueli,

      Thanks for asking, sorry I’ve checked it and they don’t work together.

      Cheers

      • Sueli November 14, 2014 at 2:50 pm #

        Thanks Kento and Antonio for the prompt reply.

  41. laurent November 13, 2014 at 4:31 pm #

    Hi, I create a website, restricting categories for subscribers and it works fine. But I have created a free access, where posts are published with the “free-studies” categories, but I can’t saw it appearing in the website. Is there something special to do to allow simply visitors to see it ?

    • kento November 14, 2014 at 12:31 pm #

      Hi Laurent,

      Nothing special really, do you have any restrictions set on the posts or the category they belong to? Can you post a link to the site please?

      • laurent November 14, 2014 at 12:34 pm #

        http://www.scalpingdaytrading.com

        Free access.

        • laurent November 14, 2014 at 12:38 pm #

          something which seems very strange. Seems to work in Chrome but not in safari. In chrome I can view the posts but in safari, nothing appear

          • kento November 14, 2014 at 1:58 pm #

            Ok that isn’t related to the plugin then, to me this rather sounds like it’s related to the theme and how it displays in different browsers. Also take into account that you might be logged in on one browser but not on the other one.

            • laurent November 14, 2014 at 3:15 pm #

              in fact, it seems that it doesn’t work with safari. If i am logged into chrome, it works fine, non logged, works fine, but in safari if I was logged, I saw the studies with groups without problems,. I only have a problem to see free studies in safari. I really don’t understand. If it was the theme, I normally was unable to read any posts, no ?

              Any suggestion ?

              • kento November 14, 2014 at 5:16 pm #

                It looks like an issue that the theme has with Safari. If it were related to any conflict while retrieving posts, it wouldn’t show in any browser.

            • laurent November 14, 2014 at 3:27 pm #

              I tried with firefox and it doesn’t work too. So it only works with chrome. Strange and I have no idea because if it was the theme, I couldn’t see anything “registered or not”.

              • kento November 14, 2014 at 5:19 pm #

                Have you tried switching the theme? Or maybe the theme authors know something about issues with Safari? I’ve looked at it through FF and don’t see a difference with Chrome right now.

              • laurent November 14, 2014 at 5:29 pm #

                I send them a message. Thank you for your help. I change a parameter in the template used and it seems working. Could you check it from your computer to be sure ?

                Thanks a lot.

                • kento November 14, 2014 at 9:23 pm #

                  Thanks Laurent, looks good from another machine here as well 🙂

              • laurent November 15, 2014 at 1:59 pm #

                Many thanks for your help.

  42. James November 5, 2014 at 10:35 pm #

    Hi, I’m using a forum wordpress theme (called forumengine by enginethemes) where it’s possible for registered users to create and reply to either POSTS or THREADS. I’ve installed the groups restrict categories plugin and it works fine for restricting access to categories and tags in POSTS but it does not provide the same functionality to the category and tag taxonomies in THREADS. Is there a way to fix that?

    Thanks.

    James

    • kento November 14, 2014 at 11:22 am #

      Hi James,

      I’ll contact the authors to see if we can get access to the theme and run compatibility tests.

      Cheers

  43. Mo October 4, 2014 at 12:00 am #

    Hi,
    I’m not sure if this is the right extension or I should use other Group one instead.

    There will be some new products showing on my homepage, with image and product title. These new product image are show to all client level, however, login is need to access the product detail page/catalog. In that way, I don’t want the products to be hidden, but restrict the access to product detail and add to cart to login user only.

    Please advise.

    • kento October 7, 2014 at 6:25 pm #

      Hi, Groups itself would be sufficient. If you restrict products, then these restrictions also apply to the shop page for example. You would have to modify filters based on what is displayed or what might be easier is to use an alternative to that, for example posts that outline basics of the product and link to the actual product page.

  44. Amedeo September 6, 2014 at 5:17 pm #

    Hi,
    i update to wp 4.0 and the protect pages hangs, there is problems with this update?
    Thanks in advance,
    Amedeo.

    • antonio September 9, 2014 at 6:50 pm #

      Hi,
      this is compatible with the last version.
      cheers

  45. Sean September 4, 2014 at 4:20 am #

    Just wanted to do a quick check: because of support of custom post-types and taxonomies, this plugin would allow me to restrict access to Topics in Groups Forums, right?

    • kento September 4, 2014 at 11:12 am #

      Hi Sean, yes that’s correct.

  46. Torre Kean August 18, 2014 at 3:30 am #

    It appears that the RSS feed urls (all variations) for the categories I have restricted are being protected. Is this intentional? I am a logged in user with the correct permissions, and the feed URL is being blocked/redirecting. It does not happen for un-protected/un-restricted categories’ feed urls.

    Help! I need to set up an RSS Email Newsletter for premium members to deliver their content daily, and this is making it impossible!

    Thanks!
    Torre

    • kento August 21, 2014 at 11:00 am #

      Hi Torre, the feeds should be protected but visible to users with the right credentials. To be able to access a feed, the viewer must be logged in, which can be a problem if the feed reader does not allow you to get across the login.

  47. Victoria August 8, 2014 at 9:18 pm #

    Hello! Is Groups 404 Redirect supposed to work with the Restricted Categories add-on? I just purchased the add-on expecting the 404 Redirect to work like it does for specific posts and pages, however the redirect is not happening… Thank you!

    • kento August 9, 2014 at 11:32 am #

      Hi Victoria, yes they work together, but you must enable this under Settings > Groups 404 > “Redirect restricted categories, tags and taxonomy terms …” Cheers!

      • Victoria August 9, 2014 at 2:30 pm #

        Kento, easy enough! Thank you! I do have another question – I have a post in 2 categorie: Launch, and Meditations. Meditations is protected, and Launch is unprotected.

        Goal: If someone accesses the category/launch page, they will see the posts with both categories, however if they try to access the category/meditations page, they will get redirected to my chosen page. If someone accesses the post in question directly, they will not be redirected (I do not have the post itself protected, just one of the 2 categories it is marked).

        Is this possible? It was possible using another Membership plugin I had in place before switching to Groups, so my fingers are crossed!

        Thanks!
        Torre

        • kento August 11, 2014 at 9:00 am #

          If your post is protected by category, then you can’t access the post directly. The very intent of protecting a post is that you can’t access it unless you possess appropriate privileges. So for example, if you have two categories, Public and Premium where only privileged users can access content assigned to the Premium category, if you assign a post to both categories it will only be visible to members of the groups that can access the Premium category. If you want to have a post visible to anyone, simply don’t assign it to a protected category. What you can do is create a version of the protected post that is accessible to public visitors.

  48. Jonathan July 15, 2014 at 1:15 pm #

    Does this work with Custom Post Types?

    • kento July 16, 2014 at 11:03 pm #

      That would rather be custom taxonomies, see the documentation for details please.

  49. Rainer June 19, 2014 at 7:14 am #

    Hi,

    i also would like to know, if it is possible to show logged in users different menus, depending on their group. How can i do that?

    Thanks in advance,
    Rainer.

    • kento June 19, 2014 at 8:53 pm #

      Hi Rainer,

      Currently you can’t show different menus unless you build something that would compose the menu items depending on who views the site. Up to a certain extent, you can have menu items show up or not based on their access restrictions though.

      But the idea sounds useful, I’ll add this to the suggested features so we have a further look at it and maybe implement it.

      Cheers

  50. Bradley June 6, 2014 at 7:06 am #

    Hi, I posted a comment previously. Not quite sure why or how it was deleted, please can you assist on this.

    We just bought the Groups Restrict Categories extension. Is there a way to restrict the visibility of the categories in the menu based on the user group?

    For instance if I have 3 categories (General, Premium, Platinum) and 3 groups associated to those categories (also, general, premium, platinum) restricting post content, is it possible to only show the category for the logged in user in the menu, based on his group?

    As in only show Premium in the menu if a user from the group premium is logged in.

    Currently all 3 categories show up in my menu, but only content from premium is displayed.

    I watched the video on this page, and from the video it seemed possible to do this, that’s why we went with this plugin.

    • kento June 10, 2014 at 7:08 pm #

      Hi, it was pending moderation. I’ve just posted a reply suggesting the use of a filter – although it should happen automatically, if your theme doesn’t go through the normal process the filter that I’ve mentioned might help. Which theme are you using please?

      • Michael August 1, 2014 at 8:46 pm #

        Hi Kento, I have the same issue, and bought the Restrict Categories plugin for the same reason. I have menu items that are categories — the parent menu item points to a group-restricted page, and is correctly hidden. The child menu items are group-restricted categories (pointing to category pages) and are displaying outside of the parent since the parent is hidden.

        I don’t see your reply that you mentioned above — could you share this with me also? Thanks in advance!

        • kento August 5, 2014 at 10:42 am #

          Hi Michael,

          Could you please explain what you mean by “… are displaying outside of the parent since the parent is hidden”? Also what type of links are you using in the menus for these and are they all restricted to groups?

          • Michael August 5, 2014 at 11:03 am #

            Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!
            So the menu consists of category links (each one takes you to a category page), and all of the categories are restricted to one group, “providers”.
            The parent menu item links to the “providers” page, which is also restricted to the “providers” group. When I log in as a user who isn’t part of the providers group, I don’t see that parent menu item, but I do see all the category links. So instead of

            Providers (page)
            -category A
            -category B
            -category C

            all being hidden, I see

            category A category B category C…

            • kento August 9, 2014 at 10:45 am #

              Ok thanks I see what you mean now. Yes, the category menu items will show up, although the items in the categories remain hidden unless the user has access. It might be a good addition to be able to also have the category menu items hidden when the user does not have access. I’ll review this and will issue an update if that is feasible.

              • Michael August 10, 2014 at 1:38 pm #

                Thanks, Kento! That would be super useful.

              • Chris October 24, 2014 at 1:46 pm #

                Hi Kento

                We recently purchased this plugin at my office and were hoping that category menu items would be hidden as well. If you could include this in a future update of the plugin it would be greatly appreciated.

                • kento October 26, 2014 at 9:11 pm #

                  Hi Chris,

                  Thanks for your feedback on the feature request, I hope that this can be added soon!

                  Cheers

              • Iggi Vermaak February 19, 2015 at 12:18 pm #

                Hello Kento

                Hope you are doing well. Also need this feature to show category items to the group that has access only. Will you be looking into this in the very near future?

                • kento February 26, 2015 at 8:55 pm #

                  Hi Iggi,

                  Thanks for commenting on that, too – it’s been postponed as work is being done on Groups that will likely affect this.

              • Iggi Vermaak February 19, 2015 at 2:06 pm #

                Actually find a really easy work around. If you use the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast, but this would work with any plugin that allows 301 redirects. Just create your pages using the same category names as the actual category archives you want to limit to a group, enforce the same group capabilities on the pages, in the Yoast settings go to the advanced tab and then issue a 301 redirect to the category. Now you can include the pages in your menu instead and they will only show for the intended group. Clicking these will obviously then redirect to the category archive you intended to show.

                • kento February 26, 2015 at 8:57 pm #

                  Thanks for sharing that, sounds like a working solution 🙂

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