Groups WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows to sell memberships with Groups and WooCommerce.
Selling Memberships with Groups and WooCommerce
Groups WooCommerce grants memberships based on products. It automatically assigns a customer to one or more groups based on the products ordered. Memberships can be sold through normal products where membership is granted for an unlimited time through one-time payments, or through subscriptions where the memberships lasts as long as the subscription is active, based on recurring payments and an optional setup fee. If you want to charge a monthly subscription fee, the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin is required, which adds a new subscription product type. Groups WooCommerce controls the memberships for the duration of the subscriptions.
WordPress and Plugin Requirements
To sell memberships with Groups and WooCommerce you need at least WordPress 4.6 and these plugins:
Groups (free) – provides the membership and access control capabilities
WooCommerce (free) – provides the e-commerce system
Groups WooCommerce – allows to sell group memberships through WooCommerce
Optionally, if you want to sell subscriptions with recurring payments, WooCommerce Subscriptions – adds subscription products and recurring payments to WooCommerce.
Hi there,
We’ve recently developed an issue where using:
WP 3.6
Groups WooCommerce by itthinx version 1.5.0,
Groups by itthinx version 1.3.12,
WooCommerce CyberSource Gateway by Justin Stern version 1.0
WooCommerce by WooThemes version 2.0.14
Fails to allow a user in the right group/capability after a purchase, and can’t figure out how to debug this further.
I’ve tried creating a sample public page and adding shortcodes for the group membership to display content only for the member, and that worked, but access to a given group-protected post returns a 403.
I’m a little frazzled, and can use any help I can get.
Minor typo – it’s a 404 Not Found, not 403 Forbidden.
Hi,
I suppose you’ve protected the post with the capabilities. Have you assigned those capabilities to the group?
Correct. Is there any way to trace the behavior, add debugging code, etc?
In
groups-woocommerce.phpthere’s a flag you can set so that it throws out additional info in the log:GROUPS_WS_LOG– set that totrueand enable debugging inwp-config.php,WP_DEBUGandWP_DEBUG_LOGshould be set totruethere. You’ll have additional info on certain events. BTW should there be any conflicts or errors in thedebug.logthat could help as well to pinpoint what’s going on there.I’ve also tried isolating the problem – it seems like it’s solely in the “Groups” realm, since the WC extension places the user in the correct group.
If need be, we’ll pay for extra support costs, or anything needed (chat, etc) to increase the turnaround time on this.
Thanks for offering that but first let’s see if we can find it out without it. Once you have set up the log stuff and get some output on the debug.log after making a test purchase, please email the contents to support at itthinx dot com (don’t publish through pastebin etc. if that’s the live site we’re talking about, otherwise that would be ok).
Also, have you checked the options under WooCommerce > Groups? Especially Order Status?
BTW, if someone tries to access content where their permission is expired, what page are they taken to? Is there a way to change the landing page for this redirect? Thx!
Hi,
with Groups 404 redirect you can change it.
cheers
Aloha Kento or other friends at ItThinx:
I am considering purchasing several of your products, and would like an opinion on whether they will integrate successfully and do what I need. We are adding a subscription-based support forum to our website friendlyaquaponics.com soon, and need software to handle the subscription end of things. Our forum is a phpbb3 forum located here: (http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com/phpBB3/forum-05.shtml); parts of it will be free and parts will be by paid subscription only; I also need to be able to give people “free passes” to the paid subscription side easily (and as automatically as possible).
I understand that Groups WooCommerce combined with WooCommerce Subscriptions should give us this capability, but I have purchased too many apps in the past on their claims, only to find (upon investing a couple of weeks in the learning curve), that there was a fatal flaw somewhere.
I am using EcWid as the cart on my site. In addition to Groups WooCommerce and WooSubscriptions, I am planning to use your Affiliates Pro EcWid integration on my current WordPress site for affiliate tracking and payment; so this is all in the same “bucket” so to speak. If necessary, I could put up a separate site for the support forum, but would prefer not to, since I’ve spent three years getting my site to where it is in the rankings. I think the forum would get more traffic on my existing site.
I am competent in HTML and WordPress, author our sites, and am fairly technical; I was an authorized AutoCAD dealer from 1990 to 97. I am not familiar with php authoring, but could learn if I had to. Thanks for your help, Aloha, Tim Mann
Aloha Tim 🙂
You won’t be able to use Groups with the forum setup you are mentioning, mainly because phpBB isn’t integrated with it. You could use Groups Forums, but if you already have a community built around phpBB, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you were able to close the ‘old’ forums based on phpBB and open up a new space using Groups Forums. Another problem I see here is that you are using Ecwid as your shop and there is no integration with Groups for Ecwid either. So Groups WooCommerce simply won’t help.
Regarding an affiliate solution, you should first use the free version of the Affiliates plugin along with the free integration for Ecwid to see if it fits within your requirements, then decide whether you should use the Pro edition or not.
Cheers
Hi, this looks like a great plugin. Just wanted to ask you, does it allow blocking access to certain URLs too? If so, could I set an expiration date for the amount of time they have to access the URL after purchasing access to it? Thanks!
Hi,
you can block access to a url, using the capabilities.
If you need sell subscriptions, you can use Groups + Groups Woocommerce + Woocommerce Subscriptions.
cheers
Hi Antonio, thanks for the fast reply. Really appreciate it!
Hi,
I wanted to purchase a couple of your plugins, but before that just wanted to make sure if I have understood this correctly.
I want to sell one year subscriptions to my users and they’ll have access to all my products (downloadable files).I’m assuming woo-commerce subscription should be enough Is that right or do I need groups + woo-commerce groups and not even woo sub.
Or maybe I need all those together?! Plz help I’m confused kind of.. And I have to set my site up quickly..
Last question : Can I sell subscription as well as separate product selling together? (To give the buyer the opportunity to whether bye a product which they want or pay a subscription/year and access to all products)
I appreciate you taking time reading and answering my questions.
Thanks again,
Ashkan
Hi Ashkan,
If these are real subscriptions, i.e. with recurring payments over the year (monthly payments for example), then you would need WooCommerce Subscriptions. If you just want a single payments against a limited membership for a year, Groups WooCommerce could be used.
It also depends on how you are going to protect access to these files. If you are going to base it on Groups and Groups WooCommerce, you can use Groups File Access to protect them based on group membership. This will also work with WooCommerce Subscriptions, the difference is whether you want recurring payments or not.
If time-limited memberships are sufficient, then you can have orders with multiple products in the same order. If it’s subscriptions, AFAIK it would still have to be separate orders.
I hope that helps you to make a choice, please ask if you need more help.
Thanks for the reply.
But just to clarify things for myself; The users are going to pay just once a year (if they’re satisfied of my products, then they’ll update their subscription for another year).
But in that duration (one year) I’ll be adding to my products and I want them to have access to them without paying any more.
What I gathered from your answer and also based on what I’ve read on your website Groups Woo-commerce will do it. (plus Groups File Access plugin). Yet I don’t get why I may need WooSub.
Does what I’ve written here fall under the category of recurring payment? (paying x amount once a year and having access to my library of products as well as future products which will be added every month).
I’m sorry, I read your answer a couple of times, yet I don’t understand the use of WooCommerce Subscriptions.
What does recurring payment exactly mean? or a time-limited membership?
Thank you…
Hi Ashkan,
You would need recurring payments (and thus WooCommerce Subscriptions) if you want their yearly payments automated, i.e. without them having to place a new order to extend access. With time-limited memberships, a customer would place an order which grants access for a year and would need to place a new order once that period of time has elapsed.
I hope that makes it clearer but feel free to ask if you need further help.
Hi Kento,
Thanks for the reply. Yes, now I know to go for which plugin. 🙂
Would it be possible for future versions to allow different groups to be assigned based on a product/subscription’s variations? That way it would be possible to, for example, have a single membership product rather than one product for each tier.
I would consider it if there is sufficient interest. I’m no expert on product variations in WooCommerce, but from what I know it will be quite a challenge to implement.
Hi there – I have WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Groups and Groups for Woocommerce installed on my site and I have noticed a conflict with ‘Force Registration’ and ‘Enable Guest checkout’. When ‘Force Registration’ is enabled it prevents users from checking out as guests with all products. I would expect this to affect subscription-based purchases on my site but not all purchases. Is it because Groups adds all users to the ‘registered’ group automatically? If I uncheck ‘Force Registration’ guest checkout works, but I’m worried that this will allow customers to purchase subscriptions as guests, which I don’t want. Is it OK to leave ‘Force registration’ unchecked even though I sell subscriptions? Thanks.
Hi Nathan,
The option forces users to log in or create an account only for those products that have groups assigned. Try with a product (of type Simple Product) that has no group assigned and you will see that you can complete checkout without creating an account. Subscriptions require an account to be created whether groups are related to the subscription or not – see Why does a customer need to create an account at checkout? in the FAQ of the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension.
I hope that makes it clearer 🙂
Hi Kento,
Thanks for the info. That’s how I thought it was supposed to work. However, with ‘force registration’ enabled I’m unable to checkout as a guest with a simple product with no group assigned to it. I get a WooCommerce error on the payment options page which says a password is required. If I disable it I am then able to do so. This is what’s puzzling me. For now, it’s not a priority. I’ve decided to disable guest checkout and force registration on all products -the majority of which are digital downloads and magazine subscriptions.
Thanks again.
Thanks Nathan. It would be interesting to find out why that happens though, it’s not normal that it would request a password when you purchase a product without group assignment and force registration enabled. I suspect a conflict.
Hi,
I need some help on something I noticed and would like to improve.
When there is a page/post enabled for specific group capability, accessing that page provides a 404 page. Well its not missing and 404 should be reserved for pages not found on our site.
So, in order to access that restricted page my users need to login first through a different page on our site then access that restricted page.
Therefore, how can I do the following:
1) If a user is not logged on and they access a restricted page how can they be prompted to login then view the page they are accessing (if they have access to it of coarse)?
2) If a logged-in user does not have access to a specific page I would like an access deny page that we would create?
How can I do these two things? Thanks!
Hi Michel,
#1 Groups 404 Redirect helps with that.
#2 That plugin helps here again, you would want a dedicated page offering a login form for non-logged in visitors and an access denied message for logged-in users – you can use Groups’ shortcodes to provide that conditional content.
Note that the response code is chosen for a reason, see the Status Code Definitions for 403 and 404.
Thank you very much for this!
Michel
You’re very welcome 🙂
Is there anything a bit more fine-grained?
Not all 404 errors will be due to trying to access a restricted page. Some are just regular missing pages/files.
It’d be great to offer subscription signups on the restricted pages without hijacking all 404s
Hi,
this plugin redirects only when someone tries to access a restricted page. Not all the 404 redirects.
Hello, I am using WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions, Groups, and Group for Woocommerce. When I go into a subscription, click groups, and click the box under Remove next to a group it works, but once I save the post it loses it. Any idea how I can fix this?
Hi there, that shouldn’t happen. Do you get any errors with debugging enabled? Maybe a conflict … also what versions are you using please?
I saw you just released an update – 1.4.1. I see in the change log you made a few changes however I’m wondering if you can detail exactly what this means:
* Fixed: missing $accepted_args on subscription_end_of_prepaid_term hook
Wondering if that will help fix the issue I’ve been having around taking a user out of a group after the subscription ends.
Hi Steve,
The number of parameters on the action hook was corrected, yes please update to that version and let me know if you still see any issues after that.
I have over a thousand registered guest contributors on my site and want to turn the site to a membership one. As a result, I want existing and new contributors to pay a monthly subscription to be able to publish/submit guest articles and have access to additional materials, information and downloads. I also want their articles and login to be done from the frontpage only and no longer through wp-admin. Is this something that I can do with your plugin or plugins? Thank you.
Have you considered using WooCommerce Subscriptions for that?
That’s pretty much what I would like to find out as I wouldn’t want to waste my money. I will be happy if the plugin can do the above plus allow me to integrate already registered members into the newly created packages in addition to supporting aweber in the registration form. Thanks.
For existing members, you could do the assignment using Groups without the need to get any premium extension. I would give that a try first before you decide to get any of the extensions. Also make sure that the way access is controlled through Groups is suitable for what you need. Once you have verified that, you can consider using Groups WooCommerce with or without WooCommerce Subscriptions to sell new memberships – I would also recommend to ask for an opinion through WooCommerce Support after you have made sure that Groups by itself is in line with the way you want things to work.
Hi,
Your plugin is great. I have a site that uses woocommerce and groups to manage access. There are 2 types, one is a subscription that will grant access and automatically charge recurring fees, and a one time purchase that will just give the user access and will expire. Since subscriptions are set and managed by woocommerce, i can find out that expiration date easiliy, but if they do a onetime purchase there is no subscription, how would I be able to find out that expiration date? Would I also be able to change this expiration date manually? Would running Groups_WS_Terminator::schedule_termination( $time, $user->ID, $group_id ); replace that expiration?
thanks!
Hi,
you can set onetime duration, in edit page product -> Product Data -> Tab Groups , here you have “Duration” and “Time unit”.
cheers
I don’t think i was clear, sorry about that. I have an old subscription system that i’m trying to convert to use woocommerce and groups. There are existing subscriptions that need to be converted to expire at their individual expiration dates, is there a way I can do this?
Hi there,
Thanks for detailing that, the
Groups_WS_Terminatorcall you mentioned wouldn’t be sufficient because the entries would be missing that it acts upon. What would be more appropriate is a means of determining a time-limited membership manually, i.e. instead of having to go through the order process, the ability to add a time-limited membership. It’s a feature I have on my todo-list for the plugin, along with the capability to edit existing memberships.Hi,
I have a question, I was hoping you guys would know how to do this ….
For reference I am using the following WooCommerce plugins/extensions:
WooCommerce
Groups WooCommerce
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Groups
Groups File Access
When I create a product as a Group Subscription (it was enabled as “Virtual”) I want that order to go into “Processing” and not Completed/Active. When we placed a test order the Order page says “Processing” which is correct, however under “Subscriptions” it shows that subscription is active and the user was added to the appropriate group without us approving them.
This seem to be related directly with the Subscription extension since it goes “Active” right away. So how can I force all subscription orders to go into some “Processing/Pending status” and not add a user into the assigned group, so we can validate if the order is legit and then approve (Completed) the order?
Thanks!
Michel
Hi Michel,
I think this can help: Why are orders set to Processing not Completed? – or you could suggest that an option is added to the Subscriptions plugin. The immediate option would be to have the products not comply with being digital and downloadable.
Cheers
Thanks. Yes, I saw that FAQ entry also, but the issue is with the Subscription portion because the order does go into “Processing”, however the Subscription goes into “Active” automatically which in return adds the user into the assigned group automatically. This means the order status, if you are using Subscriptions, is useless. Anyhow I thought I ask here since the WooCommerce support team take awhile to respond to tickets.
Overall your Groups and Group File Access extensions are awesome and provides the flexibility we need. Its the Subscription piece I’m trying to work out with our new updated site.
Thanks again for the response.
Michel
Thanks Michel, yes, ‘processing’ would still activate the subscriptions. Hmmm … what criteria do you apply to ‘validate if the order is legit’? I’m thinking, maybe there’s something in the process that could be refocused.
I am faced with this same issue. The user orders a subscription and is immediately given access to the group product before the order is validated and completed. It would be nice for this access to only be granted once the order is completed. Otherwise shop owners are potentially giving away their group products to fraudulent orders. Please let me know what the options are here and if there is anything on the roadmap to address this. Thanks in advance!
DeShark
What exact steps are you using to test this and how do you have the products set up please? Subscriptions won’t grant access to groups unless they are active.
This issue is stated in the Admin area in the Groups section in WooCommerce.
Group membership
Order Status
Add users to or remove from groups as early as the order is …
Note that users will always be added to or removed from groups when an order is completed.
This setting does not apply to subscriptions.
Yes thanks, but I was asking you for the steps and setup you are using to test it.
I have this same problem with my site I’m not sure what a customer does but they think they have paid, the groups gives them access to the virtual product- the first email is sent out, but the order is marked as ‘pending’ the paypal is not processed and I don’t get any notification from paypal that there is an order…. so i have to check regularly to ensure that there are none of these pending type orders – contact the buyer and ask them to check their paypal and try again….. 🙁 is there something I can do?
Hi Philip,
This sounds like your site is not handling incoming IPNs correctly. Have a look at PayPal Standard under the section Debugging IPN issues. Note that this is not related to this extension itself but to issues on your site handling IPNs for payments that customers make.
Cheers
Hello ,
thank you for this cool Plugin, its working great.
i would like to hide/ disable cart Button additionally present a message (you allready bought this product) for users who already are in the group they would get added to if the would buy the product, for example users who already bought the product or are added/assigned manually to the group by admin.
Is this possible, and how?
Hope its understandable what i mean.
Thanks in advance
BTW: i purchased your Plugin via woothemes Shop so i cannot access 🙁 your groups support forum. Same with Groups File Plugin via Codecanyon. Maybe you can add my user to the support forum of this 2 plugin.
Hi there,
You could edit the template and check if the user is in the product’s group, see this comment for a starting point.
You’re welcome to post your questions here and on the page for the GFA plugin, the plugin pages are the support pages for these 🙂
Cheers
I’m seeing an issue with users being removed from groups after woocommerce subscription expires. Upon expiration, the user account gets moved to the appropriate role, but the group permissions aren’t being removed. I’ve checked all settings many times: product setup, woocommerce Groups setting, etc. Do you have a suggestion for troubleshooting this issue?
FYI – Users aren’t being removed from groups when they manually cancel their subscription either (even after the subscription has expired). Also, FYI – I’m using a 1-day subscription.
Can you please check if this is similar to http://www.itthinx.com/plugins/groups-woocommerce/#comment-5685 – group memberships do not end when subscriptions are cancelled, they end when the period for which the customer has paid for ends.
Hi Kento — This is the exact problem I’ve been having.
I created a 1 day subscription and although I waited 5 days, the user was never taken out of the premium group therefore they continued to have premium access.
I’ve tested and retested but still cannot get the user to be removed.
Thanks!
and yes — I understand the duration of the subscription which is why i waited and waited to see if it was a cron job issue perhaps.
thnx
Hi Steve,
Do you have debugging enabled? It would be useful to see if the
debug.logcontains any errors that could point to conflicts with your setup or other plugins.Is there a fix to this? To automatically remove them from the group?
Hi Ben, there’s no fix needed – the users are removed after their subscriptions expire or their time-limited memberships end. If you have users that are not removed, it’s most likely due to other orders granting access.
Hi Kento,
Thanks Kento for the speedy response. I see why this the way it is. Sorry for my ignorance!
You guys have got it down!
Thanks!
Thanks Ben, no problem 🙂
I would like to tie into the method that is fired to add a user to a particular Group based on product purchased. I need to take this a step further and also assign a certain role to that user based on their group type. I figured I could do this in the php where the user is assigned the group. Can you please tell me which file I would want to incorporate this change? Thanks! And happy friday, Melissa
Hi,
you can use “groups_created_user_group” and “groups_deleted_user_group” hooks, to handle this, and create your own plugin or in theme’s function.php. For example:
add_action( 'groups_created_user_group', 'my_groups_created_user_group', 10, 2 );
add_action( 'groups_deleted_user_group', 'my_groups_deleted_user_group', 10, 2 );
function my_groups_created_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
.....
}
function my_groups_deleted_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
.....
}
cheers
I’m looking for something that does exactly this, but I’m not too keen on PHP, I know how/where to add code, but I’m just not sure what I’d need exactly to make this happen.
Particularly what would go inside here?
function my_groups_created_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
…..
}
function my_groups_deleted_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
…..
}
You can do something like that:
function my_groups_created_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
if ( $group_id == "XX" ) {
$user = new WP_User( $user_id );
// Add role
$user->add_role( 'editor' );
}
}
function my_groups_deleted_user_group( $user_id, $group_id ) {
if ( $group_id == "XX" ) {
$user = new WP_User( $user_id );
// Remove role
$user->remove_role( 'editor' );
}
}
cheers
Thanks for this – still needs a bit of tweaking though wonder if you have any ideas.
Here’s what I’ve got so far…
When an unregistered person buys a product they are added to the WooCommerce ‘customer’ role AND the role that I’ve created for this product based on the group for said product. However, the new role isn’t really recognized as a role.
Additionally this only affects new users and not users which are already members of the site looking to upgrade their account to a higher level. i.e. they aren’t placed into the higher role even though they are placed into the higher group status.
I could be going about this all backwards – it really feels like I’m trying too hard to get a simple implementation to work lol.
Thanks again for any help you can provide.
Hi,
I think this code should work fine. Be careful in Users table column ‘role’ only show one role (you should use the filter to see the users by roles).
To update all users, you should create your own function with ‘get_users‘ and Groups API.
cheers
Hi,
After a few more tests I think this has something to do with the subscription plugin rather than the groups plugin. Thanks for getting back to me anyway.
Ok, if you find out what happens please let me know as well.
Just removing notifications of posts on this commentary
Hi,
I have come across an issue where if a user buys a subscription but doesn’t go through the payment process they have an option to ‘reactivate’ their subscription. If they click this they have access to the restricted page without paying. Have you come across this before?
Thanks for your help!
That shouldn’t happen, can you give access to the site where you have seen this so we can try it out?
When creating a new subscription with the woocommerce subscriptions plugin and with the groups and groups for woocommerce plugin/extension, I am able to set a duration for the group (which would typically be set to the length of the subscription). I left this blank when creating my first subscription, then I manually created a subscription for a user. I set the order date to a year past and the subscription to be a yearly one. This created an expiration date of expired, which is what I wanted. I noticed, though, that the group assignation was not removed for the customer although the subscription was set to expired. I then realized that it must have to do with the group duration time frame. I went to edit the product and noticed that the group duration option was no longer available. I then tested the creating of a new subscription product and the group duration period was available there. So, the group duration period is able to be set when a new product is created, but once the product has been created, the group duration period is uneditable. How can I edit this after a product is created?
… just linking to the answer given here for reference.
I’m using Woo groups and Woo subscriptions to sell a subscription with a sign up fee, 1 month free trial then a recurring 3 month subscription. The way things are set up I currently I need to manually mark each subscription as completed before a user gains access to the content they purchased. Is there a way to grant users access automatically when they make their purchase?
The user is added to the groups when the subscription is activated, do you see the order as processing after placing it?
Seems like I must of just been testing something wrong as its working fine now. Thanks for the quick response.
Cool 🙂
Another question using the same product format as before Woo Groups & Subscriptions with sign up fee, 1 month free trial, then recurring subscription every 3 months with length forever.
I’m having issues testing how permissions work when a user cancels their subscription which I assume a lot my users may do just as a way to turn-auto renew off. Currently if a user cancels their subscription right after making their purchase their role goes from subscriber to customer and they maintain their group access (this is good they should maintain access). However, there is no way for a user to see when said access will expire. I assume it would be removed on the trial end date but would appreciate if you could confirm this.
Another case is if the user cancels in the middle of a 3 month subscription period. Will the group access end at the end of the 3 months?
Ideally I’d like to just have basic auto-renew on/off functionality instead of cancel/renew but that is not possible currently, correct?
Thanks!
Hi Ryan,
I’ll try to add options to show information about the subscriptions to the updated release I’m preparing. This would allow to show group membership in user profiles or using a shortcode.
When a user cancels a subscription, the membership will remain in place until the period that has been paid for ends. With the 3 month subscription period for example, if you subscribe and cancel after a month, you would still have access for another two months.
I’m not sure what you mean by auto-renew though … like putting a subscription on hold?
Cheers
Can groups woocommerce extension protect access to vbulletin forums? if so, is there any instruction on how that might be done?
Hi,
Groups protect wordpress system, sincerely we are not sure if it can protect vbulletin information. You can try it and you’ll tell us.
cheers
Hello,
Guys I need to create 400+ capabilities, and need to create 400+ groups and assign the new capabilities to them. Is there a another way to do this other than doing them one by one?
Hi,
right now, there is no way to do it.
Perhaps through a custom script.
cheers
OK, I will try to do a bulk import of a csv file with SQL. Thanks
Hi Kento,
I have a question regarding the time-limited membership that Groups WooCommerce offers. Is there a way for me to add custom dates for expiration? I need subscriptions to expire twice a year on set dates…
Or to be more specific, I am selling subscriptions to semesters. semester one subscriptions needs to end on 30 June, while semester 2 needs to end on 31 December regardless of sign up date.. The products are variable products -> on the product detail page the user will choose semester one or two…
Hi Julius, no that is not possible.
I’m having problems with the Woocommerce Groups plug in- with it installed, My plug-ins page does not load. I’ve download version 1.3.4 from Woo but I still cannot get it to work? Help?
Is this still an issue Frederick?
This is no longer an issue. The problem was that I’d recently migrated my site to a different location on the server (HostGator). But needed to increase the WordPress memory allocation. Once I did that the problem vanished.
Thanks for responding.
Frederick
Thanks for the reply Kento. I have just begun chatting to the Woo gents RE the subscription module. They seem to think this module on its own might be enough for what i need. I would have though that the memberships module would be a must in addition to the subs plugin in order to define paid members (and the related content) over site guests?
Am i right in thinking this?
They rather complement each other for certain use cases, Groups WooCommerce offers an alternative when you don’t need real subscriptions but want to offer time-limited memberships.
Hi, im in the design process of a website for a friend who owns a magazine company. The idea is to setup the site so we can offer people to subscribe to posted (normal mailed) copies of the magazine over say 6 or 12 months.
Additionally, we need an online solution so people can subscribe for a certain amount of months and be granted access to an online version of the magazine (either online or downloadable) Im thinking online would be safer.
Would this solution cover all basis for this setup? I have used Woocommerce quite a bit in the past, but never to this level.
Your help and advice is appreciated in advance.
Steve
Hi Steve,
Basically yes, you might want to have a look at the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension as well, in case you want clients to be able to subscribe indefinitely. Otherwise you can just use the time-limited memberships that it provides.
If you are going to provide an online version of the magazine, Groups can help you to protect the content.
Please feel free to ask more if needed.
Cheers
Hi Kento,
I’m attempting to do the same thing as Steve. However when I set up a 1 year membership a user can purchase a second membership, but their “group” expiration doesn’t extend past the initial year. Therefore they’ve paid for 2 years of membership but only receive 1. Any idea how to resolve this?
Hi Max,
Yes that’s correct, if the product adds the user to a group and it is purchased multiple times, the current implementation would not extend the group membership. Depending on how the memberships are used, that can be desirable or not. It might be a good idea to add an option that allows to extend the membership for such cases, I’ll consider adding this to the plugin.
Hi Kento,
First, Thanks for the great plugins and your support.
I am using Groups WooCommerce and not subscriptions. I set the duration length under the group tab when editing the product. ( I have only 3 products and groups- 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days)
Would changing the order date under WooCommerce>Orders change the expirations date?
In these few cases I don’t want to charge them anything, just extend their access as a courtesy.
Along your idea, I could create a new product (keeping it hidden from the public) for say 10 days of access for $0, then go to their user account, change their password ( since I can’t see it) Buy the 10 days of access for them and inform them of their new password. A little awkward but it doesn’t happen that often.
If you have any better idea of how to manipulate the expiration or start date that would be great.
Thanks,
Ed
Thanks a bunch Ed, that’s really kind, trying to do my best to help 🙂
It’s simpler in that case, create a product that grants access for free and assigns to the group(s), create a capability that you enable for access restriction and protect the free product with that. Then create a new order from the back end, assign it to a user for whom you wish to extend membership, add the product, mark as completed, finished.
Hello,
I am using Groups for WooCommerce selling access to an online course by restricting access to those pages. I sell this access in 30, 60 and 90 day blocks using the groups duration feature.
On special request can I manually extend the expiration date any way?
I have experimented a little by adding Subscriptions but get kind of a messy pricing scheme, currently the 90 day access is priced at $99 without subscriptions and with subscriptions it forces me to sell 3 months at $33 per month instead of a flat $99 and even then didn’t see a way to extend a subscription.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Ed,
Do you refer to the time-limited membership that Groups WooCommerce offers, or are you using real subscriptions with WooCommerce Subscriptions? I don’t think you can do it with the latter directly (but I would ask on WooThemes to make sure, it might just have escaped my attention), with the time-limited subscriptions you won’t be able to extend them directly either, but as a solution, you could give restricted access to a product to group members and let them purchase extended access at a lower price.
Do you refer to the time-limited membership that Groups WooCommerce offers?
Where is that time-limite option? I cannot find it 🙁
Cheers
Mario
Hi Mario,
you can see it, in edit view product -> “Product Data” -> Tab “Groups”
cheers
I was wondering if it was possible to use the Groups+WooCommerce setup to restrict the ability to actually PURCHASE an item (or add it to your cart), rather than restrict access to the page itself. One of my clients sells products that she only wants licensed cosmetologists buying, so I was thinking that after she vetted someone’s credentials she could add then to an “approved” group and that would allow them to make the purchases. She wants everyone to be able to SEE the products and prices themselves, because she has to incentives people jumping through the hoops of sending their credentials to her, but she doesn’t want them purchasing until they’ve been approved. After scouring the WC extensions, it seems like Groups is the best way to pull this off, but I’m not sure if it’s an available option. What say you?
Thanks!
Hi,
Yes that’s possible, you can restrict access to products with Groups very easily. Just use the Access restrictions box on products as with any other post type. You can either use the default
groups_read_postcapability which you need to assign to the group that should be able to access those products, or define a new capability if needed and enable it in Groups > Options for access restriction.Cheers
Hello
Sorry to be repetitive but I’m basically asking the same question again as not sure I fully understood the answer. I intend to use Groups and also Groups for WooCommerce to sell memberships on the site and then restrict certain products to members.
As the previous user stated I want all users to be able to see all products and the restriction only to prevent the non-member from buying the restricted product.
So they would still be able to go to the product page, but either the add to cart facility would be disabled or alternatively when they try to complete the purchase they would be notified that they have to buy membership.
I have attempted to follow the instructions you outlined above but they seem to prevent the product from even showing for a non-registered user.
Is the restriction not working for me as outlined above simply because I have not yet purchased Groups for WooCommerce (I will do as soon as I have understood it is the right thing for me), or have I misunderstood how your restrictions work?
Sorry for the long message – hope my explanation is clear.
Thanks
Joel
Hi Joel,
So what you want to achieve is:
– first have a customer buy membership
– anyone can see all products on the site
– only paying members can buy certain products
I think the most appropriate way to achieve that requires two things:
– display “Add to cart” buttons only for members; this requires to modify the product templates using the Groups API to conditionally display the buttons based on membership
– a mechanism to verify that the cart contents are valid for the current visitor (to avoid people being able to use tricks to add things to the cart even though the buttons aren’t displayed)
You would need someone familiar with WooCommerce to do these customizations for you.
I hope that helps to guide you in the right direction.
Cheers
Thanks very much.
Yes, that’s a great help.
Your product will still be useful to me but clearly I’m going to need to customize more or use something else too.
Thanks very much
Joel
Thanks Joel, BTW the API section will be useful for the customization http://api.itthinx.com/groups/
Thanks Kento… I will dive into configuring this and let you know if I hit any snags. Thanks for writing this plug-in.
Frederick
Hi Kento,
Is there any way to get the days left of a membership?
Thanks!!
Hi Nuria,
Under WooCommerce > Subscriptions you will find the expiration date for each subscription, membership will end with the subscription.
Hi Kento,
If I have a site that is selling access to individual posts/pages as products. There may be dozens and dozens of these type products in the store. People will purchase access to these posts/pages. Does that mean I need to create a separate group/capability for EACH product? If so, will that impact performance? Or is there a better way to do this.
Hi Frederick,
You would have to create paired groups and capabilities for each exclusive subset of products in that case. It won’t impact on performance. To give an example:
Assume pages (= your products): PA, PB, PC, PD
a) If access to all pages is to be exclusive, create groups A, B, C, D and capabilities a, b, c, d and assign those capabilities to their respective groups. You would create products for each group and sell access to each page individually via its group-associated product.
b) For subsets you would just group them: create groups A, B, C, D and capabilities a, b, c, d as before but assign multiple groups by product.
Any doubts or questions please let me know 🙂
I know I can assign a page or post to a group to protect access to people who purchased the product with the group attached.
How do I do this?
I have WordPress multisite (sub-domain) setup. Each product has its own sub-domain support website.
I want to protect an entire sub-domain blog by assigning the entire blog a group permission to view.
That way everything I put on the entire sub-domain blog is only viewable by people who purchase a product on the woocommerce store on the primary site.
This will be MUCH EASIER than trying to remember to protect every single page/post/forum topic/reply/etc that is ever created on that sub-domain site.
How can I do this?
*Seems so simple, but I can’t find where I can input the group permission to an entire sub-domain blog.
**amember pro does this, but I hate that plugin as it has a totally separate user database. I totally wasted my money buying that amember pro plugin when I can just use your free plugin + the subscription plugin if I can protect a whole site with yours.
thanks
Hi Shawn,
I’m preparing a plugin that restricts access to blogs based on a user’s membership with the Registered group (could add other groups as an option later). It’s a beta in testing but seems to work quite nicely. The plugin is called Groups Blog Protect and will be made available later (probably during the day).
From what you explain I think it comes close to what you’re looking for. I’d be happy to put the plugin’s code up on GitHub to facilitate enhancements as well.
Cheers
The plugin has just been released.
I have Groups, Groups for WC and Subscriptions installed.
I have one Group with a permission called Premium. When a customer places an order, Woo Subscriptions create the WordPress user and assigns a Role of Subscriber with the Group and permission of Premium. That works great. The problem is that when the customer Suspends or Cancels the order, Woo Subscriptions changes the Role to Customer but the Group and permissions don’t change. Thus still giving the member access to my content. I’m trying to figure out how to set up Groups so that when a customer Suspends or Cancels that the permissions get changed as well. In other words, how to remove the Premium permission automatically. Either that, or how do I set up the Customer Role so that it has no permissions other that to read posts.
I know I’m missing something really stupid. If you could help, I’d really appreciate it. Oh one more question… do you think that the new version of WooCommerce that’s about to be released will affect your Groups or Groups for WC or your Affiliate extensions? Is it a wait and see thing or do you think your extensions will remain compatible?
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
When a subscription is cancelled it does not imply that the user should automatically be removed from a group. The user should remain in the group during the time covered by the last payment. It’s a common misconception and being asked quite frequently. Example: I sign up and pay $15 for a month premium membership, right after that I cancel my subscription. I have still paid for a full month and should have premium access during that time. Once the month is over, my premium membership will end automatically.
Regarding your other question, the plugins are already tested to work with the new release.
Cheers
Hi,
It would be great to have this info in the documentation or F.A.Q. It makes complete sense but until I read it I was stuck.
Thanks!
Hi Steve,
There’s information about cancelled subscriptions in the Subscriptions FAQ 😉
Hi Kento,
We find that “Groups” and new WooThemes plugin “Sensei” can’t work together, consequently “Groups for WooCommerce” neither.
Here is the error from the logs:
PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user() in /htdocs/wp-includes/user.php on line 209
Can you please post the full message – pastebin – or post a link to the site to see it?
The *logs were provided by our hosting provider (ZippyKid) http://d.pr/i/vFsf, however when “Groups” and “Sensei” are both enabled we get the error: HTTP 500 – http://d.pr/i/6sKn.
Also, the WooThemes support team recreated this issue as well (support ticket #5936).
-Hope this helps!
Thanks, I’m looking at the issue and have seen the tickets as well. I have posted the full error here which discovers what exactly happens, now we have to see how it can be solved.
I’ve proposed a solution (left notes on both tickets on WooThemes).
Thank you very much Kento 🙂
HI,
I am running two installs, one a single and another multipress. I have woocommerce, groups, subscriptions, and will be purchasing woocommerce groups shortly. My main site is on a single install which holds my shop which is publicly available to everyone (run by woocommerce) and some leader content that invites then to delve into the main content areas.
The main content areas are on a multipress install on a subdomain (i.e. subdomain.maindomain.com. The subdomain is a physical domain, not a wildcard. If they click one piece of leader content, it will send them to the main content area. I am wanting to restrict the content on the multipress install with the main content areas.
Here are my questions:
1) Can the groups plugin work across two separate installs?
2) Is there a way to put a domain block on my subdomain with a message that states that they are required to purchase a subscription and either provide a subscription form on-screen or redirect them to a subscription page on the main site?
3) When the subscribe / unsubscribe it adds / removes their permissions?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Manning
Hi Manning,
Regarding #1 that would require a mechanism that essentially synchronizes user and group data across both sides. It’s possible to develop such a mechanism, but you cannot do it OOTB.
For #2 you would need some custom development based on Groups’ API.
Yes on #3.
Cheers
Hi Kento,
Thanks for the feedback. I will look into the groups API and what it might take to build a mechanism as you suggested to sync user group data across the domains. Not imperative for my launch but possibly down the road.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Somehow, I didn’t get notified of your response until now.
Thanks,
Manning
Thanks Manning, feel free to post here about your solution if you’re adopting one. It might be useful for others 🙂
Can you limit the number of products someone purchases? For instance, I sell a group membership within a product and I want someone to only be able to purchase one product?
There is an option in WooCommerce for that, see Limit the purchasable quantity ….
How do I use the API to add a user to a group?
like this
Do you know of any conflicts that your plugins have with the Linen theme?
None that I’m aware of.
When setting up a subscription product, the “GROUPS” tab shown in your example does not display in the product data field. This seems to prevent auto allocation of access when anyone buys.
I’m running groups with woocommerce, subscriptions on the white light theme.
Am I missing something that prevents it displaying? Having looked around I’ve not seen this issue raised.
Thanks in advance.
That seems odd, maybe a conflict? What other plugins do you have activated please?
Hi,
Was there any solution to this? I have the same problem. The groups tab is not shown in my product edit page as the example in the picture shows.
I deactivated all plugins exept: WooCommerce, Groups adn Groups for WooCommerce.
But still no show.
I see the tab now: I think the problem was because my folder of woocommerce was not the correct name (it added -1) because of double download).
thanks
Okay this is frustrating, why aren’t you answering my question?
I’ve bought the plugin, and I don’t have time to wait for Woo to finish up their party and answer my questions.
I’ve bought the Groups WooCommerce plugin, and I have a question:
How to redirect unregistered users to a certain page? Let’s say I have a homepage that is only for premium members, how do I redirect unregistered users to OTHER page instead of the home page? Thank you.
Are you referring to the one regarding usage I responded to earlier today? It sometimes takes time to get to respond while I’m busy with new releases 🙂
Regarding the redirects I’ve mentioned a plugin that should be helpful for what you want to achieve.
What I don’t understand why there are two plugins. Why don’t just integrate everything in one single plugin?
Although I know is easy to express opinions and I’m sure you have your own reasons to do it this way.
It is also not clearly explain in Woothemes what these plugins do and not do separately or together, and where one depends on the other one to do what and what they can actually do an their own.
I find there is also different ways of getting support for these plugins and from different authors.
Sincerely I find this confusing.
You should create a Comparasion Table with all these plugins, explaining what combination of them do you need to do what.
And also I find it would be fare to sell both together as a combo for a special price.
I hope this helps
Thanks
I think he have explained the plugin quite clearly…….
With Groups (free plugin), you can create unlimited groups that can view certain post/pages/content in your site depending on what you limit on each group
With WooCommerce (free plugin) + Groups WooCommerce, you can sell membership! And after they have bought a membership, they will be automatically assigned to a group that they belong
And to sell membership online, you will need WooCommerce (eCommerce system) and Groups WooCommerce (to enables you to sell membership, WooCommerce can only sell normal things that an ecommerce offers)
hope this helps!
okay I think I’ll buy this plugin to replace the WordPress Membership plugin that I am using right now. But before that, can you tell me how to do these things with your plugin?
– Create 3 groups (demo, basic & premium)?
– Restrict pages/post to demo, basic & premium groups?
– Restrict certain areas in a page/post with shortcode to certain groups?
– Redirect unregistered/unprivileged users to a no access page?
– Redirect users to a certain page after they’ve logged out from the site?
– Can you restrict downloads to registered groups only?
Thank you!
Hi Akmal,
The documentation page for the plugin details how you can set these up, information about how to use Groups is in the Groups Documentation.
Redirects on 404 can be handled by a plugin such as 404 Simple Redirect, for redirecting after logout there should be something around as well.
For restricted downloads you can use the Groups File Access plugin.
heheh thanks man!
How about a [shortcode] to display what groups and or capabilities are required to access and view the current post/page/content?
e.g. When users are viewing single post or page templates, sidebar has shortcode, [groups_content_user_groups], to display something the the effect of the following:
CONTENT RESTRICTED to:
– Registered
— Members
— Premium
—- [click HERE to go PLATINUM!!!]
(ok – the hierarchy and up sell examples are just for fun… but I’m sure you get my point)
(again, thanks for the awesomeness)
Thanks for the suggestion, yes I can see it could make sense to have these, although you could simply put that on the page as well 😉
Hi,
I have a question:
I want visitor to see a website just when they pay, but I want to limit the access time to let’s say 60 days. There is no renewals or so. When they want to see that page again, they will have to buy it again. Can this Groups extension do this without having to purchase the subscriptions Extension?
Thanks
Mario
Hi Mario, what you describe is a 60 day subscription and that would require the subscriptions extension as well.
Hi Kento,
“as well” means, I have to buy both extensions? or just the Subscription extension?
it would be both in this case.
Hi there, I was told to contact you regarding this issue. I’m using the Propulsion Theme that has been designed to work well with all of WooCommerce’s plugins.
I purchased the groups extension plugin for the site that I’m working on. After purchasing it the plugin collapsed one of the site’s elements that I was using. After getting support to fix the collapsed div/php the solution conflicted with the shortcode script that was able to be inserted and function prior to activating the groups extension as well.
The tech support person said:
“Hey!
Please contact the Groups author in this case: http://www.itthinx.com/contact/ – it seems like he uses a content filter which breaks our theme.”
I have some useful clues and lines of code that were indicated as the primary area of focus but I don’t want to go on for too long here just in case I should just contact you via email, privately. But in the page text it said that you don’t answer support questions there.
Hi Bryan, here would be the appropriate place. Can you also post a link to the site/page where you see the issues?
Hi there,
Here is a link to the website and page that is having the issues:
http://virtualprivateinternet.com
The default theme that is being used can be found here:
http://themeforest.net/item/propulsion-responsive-business-ecommerce/1126092?sso?WT.ac=search_item&WT.seg_1=search_item&WT.z_author=Kriesi
The line of code that I commented out to get the call out box to return was in the helper-templates.php file:
// $dynamic_text = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $dynamic_text);
This brought the box back but disabled the ability to use html and/or shortcodes in that area.
Another tech support post (the one that suggested I write you directly and that there is something, content filter wise that is causing the conflict) produced this block of code as the area of focus:
if(!function_exists(‘avia_banner’))
{
function avia_banner($position)
{
$extraClass = “”;
$output = “”;
$cookieHash = “”;
$bannerText = avia_get_option(‘banner’);
$cookieName = THEMENAME.’_avia_banner’;
$bannerHash = md5($bannerText);
if($position) $extraClass = ‘relative_pos’;
if(!empty($_COOKIE[$cookieName])) $cookieHash = $_COOKIE[$cookieName];
$output .= “”;
if(trim($bannerText) != “” && $bannerHash != $cookieHash)
{
$output .= “$bannerText “.__(‘close’,’avia_framework’).”“;
}
$output .= “”;
echo $output;
}
}
==
I hope those clues help. Thank you for taking a look at this.
bump
Hi,
I’m using woocommerce with the same Propulsion Template and I’m planning to buy your Group extension as well. How is this going?
Thanks
Mario
Looking into it … the only the_content filter that Groups places filters out the content when the viewer must not see it because of access restrictions in place, that wouldn’t cause any conflicts with a theme though.
Ok tested it with all current versions of Groups, Groups WooCommerce, WooCommerce and the Propulsion theme. Not a single notice with full debugging on so that’s good. Site looks good as well (nice theme by the way). You mentioned this “…collapsed one of the site’s elements that I was using. …” – what element exactly is that and how are you placing it on the site?
Hey Kento,
Thank you for taking a look. The element that was collapsed was the callout box. That is the area just below the main navigation and header above the homepage slide. Right now there is text that reads: “You’re IP address is [the shortcode] in the city of [shortcode] – Why should you care?”
When I inspect it with Firebug this is the div: outer_callout dynamic_el_1
That block of PHP I inserted in an earlier comment is the block of PHP that calls this area.
++
I went through and tested other shortcodes that came installed, default with the theme (which I think is a nice theme as well – thank you!) and they did not or no longer worked in that area. Let’s call it the ‘callout box’. And I inserted the shortcode that is not working in the callout box into the body of a page and it functioned just fine.
The shortcode in the callout box area is an ip locator plugin that I found that did not come with the site; default. It worked just fine until uploading the groups and groups extension plugin.
So weird. And what stinks is that I’ve been searching for another ip locator plugin/geo location plugin to use in that area and haven’t been able to find one just yet. Then, I realized – no shortcodes are going to work in that area which I really need to work because it is part of the ‘presentation/pitch’ of the site.
Ok so what happens is that shortcodes don’t work in that area? Then it would be an issue with the theme not supporting them inside the area, especially because they do work outside. Or couldn’t you use Custom Post Widget?
The extra plugin is this one:
http://www.wp-geolocation.com/
Hi there,
I ended up inserting the script I needed to work and code via javascript based on a comment from a thread on the GeoLocation plugin’s support page. It worked in this instance. I still have no idea where the conflict is coming from, shortcode wise. If you need me to test anything for you – to find a lasting solution to get the shortcode working again – I’m here to help. If not . . . moving on.
Thank you!
See this comment.
Does this plugin also secure images and other uploaded media? For example, I have some posts that only paying members should be able to view. On these posts I have images and that I upload. If visitors to my site do not buy membership I don’t want to allow them access to those images on the post. Even if they can’t see the post, I don’t want them having any access to the images. Does this plugin do that? If not, any recommendations? This plugin looks like something I could use, but I really need to protect all content.
Thanks!
Access to files can be protected with the Groups File Access extension. Groups 1.3.0 (which has just been released) allows to restrict access to Media (the attachment post type), but this does not protect the actual media files related, if someone knows the URL of a file they can still access it and that’s what Groups File Access does protect.
Why do I have to complete the orders manualy? I see the transaction ID, the PayPal payment and the orders stay on “Processing”. I have to put the orders manualy on “Completed”.
So the customer don’t have acces to the group content he paid for, until I put “Completed” on the order.
Thanks!
There is an update pending release that allows you to have the group assignment done automatically when an order is already in Processing. It should be out within a few days.
I would like to have the group assignment done automatically when an order is already in Processing, has this been addressed in a update yet?
Hi,
you can set this on Woocommerce->Groups “Add users to or remove from groups as early as the order is …”.
cheers
I Have It Set as you describe. On 2 Occasions system did not grant user to page reserved for group member. i am selling access to a page that allows for purchaser to fill out form for rental app. I set up as product and check box under group setting to give access to “premium” member. when customer purchases I get notification of such, as well as, paypal notice. but system only shows them as registered. I have to manually change order to completed to change the customer to premium.
There is an option under WooCommerce > Groups that you can use “Add users to or remove from groups …” – set that to Processing it will save you the effort of manually completing the orders.
Groups with WooCommerce looked ideal for what I am trying to accomplish with a few sites I am developing, but I wanted to clarify some of the functionality. I plan to use PayPal standard and I want to ensure that the user only gets added to the group after payment as been processed and confirmed through PayPal, and not when they are added to the user table on checkout.
The user is added to the group(s) when the order status is completed, this is after payment has been received so it covers your requirement. The only group that a user will belong to automatically is the Registered group.