Setting up Membee’s Integrated Login System with your WordPress Site

What is the Membee Login Integration for WordPress?

It’s simple – it is the ability for the member to login to “members only” content on your WordPress site and features (the member’s profile for example) using either a Membee username and password or one of their social network usernames and passwords. The plugin’s purpose is remove the hassle and additional work related with managing member access (activating/deactivating login access, controlling which members see what content). Once you have the plugin working, you’re done and from there, you manage your members in Membee knowing that the member’s access to content is managed via the plugin WITHOUT additional effort on your part.

What you need to know before you get started.

The admin username used to access your WordPress site cannot be the same as the username used in ANY records in Membee.

Please ensure that you don’t lock yourself out of your WordPress site’s Dashboard. If you use the same email address that is used to access Membee (by the staff, any user or your test record in Membee) as you use to log into your WordPress site as the site’s administrator and you login to the site, WordPress will do exactly what you’ve asked it to do. WordPress will replace the “Administrator” role with the role data it is getting from Membee and this will effectively lock you out of you site’s dashboard by replacing your “Administrator” role with a “Subscriber” role. Not good.

Make sure your site is not set to use WordPress’ default Permalink

By default, when you set up a WordPress site it is setup to use WordPress’ default Permalinks. A Permalink is simply the way WordPress shows the URL of the page. You can see all the choices below

You can’t leave your site set to the default setting because when Membee passes information to the widgets for it’s features (such as the event calender) the query code that is included in the link will conflict with the WordPress default setting. We recommend that you set your permalinks to use the “Post Name” setting. This not only will ensure that you have no conflicts with Membee’s features, it is a much friendlier format for your visitors.

You can change your permalink settings by:

1. Logging into your WordPress Dashboard
2. Clicking on “Settings” in the menu on the right
3. Clicking on the “Permalinks” link in the list of items that will be displayed below settings.
4. Clicking in the “Post Name” selection
5. Clicking on “Save Changes”

You will need to have an excellent understanding of how to install and work with plug-ins

If you aren’t familiar with how to install and work with plug-ins on your WordPress site then you will need to work with the developer who set up your WordPress site to help you implement this

You can set up the integration simply control access to a Member’s only section or further refine access by setting up different roles within Membee.

For example, if you wanted to have a section of your site only set up so only members who are a participant in the board of directors can see those pages you can set that up. This is optional – meaning that if you only want to set up the login so that your members can access your member’s only section you will not need to set up any roles.

You do not import/sync any members or roles with WordPress.

The plug-in for the Membee Login communicates with Membee to check to see if the person trying to access the page has access. All the login is controlled in Membee, so if access for a member has been de-activated, they will not be able to log into your WordPress site.

If you have implemented roles in Membee, these roles are automatically created in WordPress as soon as a member logs in. So the general process used during set up is to create a test member with all the roles that you will be implementing and then log into your WordPress site. This will create the roles in WordPress which can then be assigned to pages etc.

There are steps that need to be completed in Membee as well as on the WordPress site

If you are a Membee user or have been given access to Membee as a developer you will be able to complete all the steps below. If you have not been granted access to Membee then you will need to coordinate some of the steps below with the users who have access.

Enter Trusted Domains

NOTE: If you are implementing Membee for the first time your implementation coordinator will have completed this step and you can go directly to “Get and install the WordPress plugin” on your site below.

Your first step is to enter the the domain name(s) where the Membee online widgets are installed:

1. Log into Membee and click on your avatar in the top right hand corner of the page.
2. Select Admin Settings
3. Click on “People & Organizations”
4. Click on “Manage” for “Login & Access Roles”
5. Click on the “Actions” button beside the “Member Service Center” program.
6. Select “Edit”.
7. In the Trusted Domains field, enter the domain(s) for the site you will be using Membee features on. The domain should be “explicit” and each domain pointing to one DNS is separated by a semi-colon. For example, if your site’s domain is myownsite.com and www.myownsite.com, myownsite.com, and info.myownsite.com, where all of them point to your site in DNS, then your entry in the Trusted Domain field should be “www.myownsite.com;myownsite.com;info.myownsite.com.”
8. Click “Save and Close”.

Set up Membee to integrate with the WordPress plugin

NOTE: If you are implementing Membee for the first time your implementation coordinator will have completed this step and you can go directly to “Get and install the WordPress plugin” on your site below.

The next step is to set up a program and roles in Membee. A program is what integrates the Membee WordPress plugin. There is a generated App ID code used to connect the website to Membee’s features. Roles are then set in a program and used to control access to specific content on your website, giving some members (eg. board of directors) access to certain pages. This will give you the information you need to set up the WordPress Plugin.

Set up your program

NOTE: If you are implementing Membee for the first time your implementation coordinator will have supplied you with the details for your program and you can go directly to “Get and install the WordPress plugin” on your site below.

1. Log into Membee and click on your avatar in the top right hand corner of the page
2. Select Admin Settings
3. Click on “People & Organizations”
4. Click on “Manage” for “Login & Access Roles”
5. Click on “Add Program”
6. Enter the name you want to call your program – you can call the program whatever you would like to call it.
7. Make sure the Active check box is checked
8. In the Description field, enter the description for the program. For example, “This program controls allows access to our website”.
9. In the Trusted Domain field, enter the domain(s) for the site you will be using this program for (this insures that your member login cannot be hijacked and placed on an unauthorized site). The domain should be “explicit” and each domain pointing to one DNS is separated by a semi-colon. For example, if your site’s domain is myownsite.com and www.myownsite.com, myownsite.com, and info.myownsite.com, where all of them point to your site in DNS, then your entry the Trusted Domain field should be “www.myownsite.com;myownsite.com;info.myownsite.com.”
10. Click on Save
11. This will generate the “Secret” code and “App ID” that you will need to set up the WordPress Plugin – record these digitally so they can be entered when you’re setting it up as described below in “Get and Install the WordPress plugin on your site”
12. Click on “Save”.
13. If you are only setting up a member’s only section on your site you can go to “Get and install the WordPress plugin on your site” below
14. If you are setting up a member’s only section as well as content that specific groups of members will have access to (such as a section for members of the board of directors) you can set up additional roles as described in “Set up roles” below

Set up roles (Optional)

This is an optional step and allows you to set up additional roles which you can then use to control access to specific content on your site. For example, if you have a section of your website that you only want members of the Board of Directors to be able to access you can set up a Board of Directors role.

1. Log into Membee and click on your avatar in the top right hand corner of the page
2. Select Admin Settings
3. Click on “People & Organizations”
4. Click on “Manage” for “Login & Access Roles”
5. Click on the “Actions” button for the program you want to add roles to and select “Edit”. Ensure that the program you’re adding roles to is the active program that is linked to the WordPress plugin by the app ID. These roles will not appear if the website has a different program app ID
6. Under the “Roles” panel click on Add
7. Add the name of the Role
8. Add in a description for the role. (This simply describes what the role is used for, for example “This role allows members who are part of the Board of Directors to access Board of Directors content”)
9. Click on Save and Close.
10. You can add as many roles as you wish, start again at step 6 if you have more to add.
11. Save it

Get and install the WordPress plugin on your site

Get and install the plugin

1. Go to the Membee Login plugin located in the WordPress Plugin Directory at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/membees-member-login-widget/
2. Download and follow the steps found on the page in the “Installation” tab to install it on your site
3. Once it has been installed, choose “Settings” on the Dashboard and click on “Membee Login”
4. Enter the Client ID, Secret and Application ID from the program you created above (Set up your program)

Set up your login page

1. Add a new page to your site.
   • This will be the page where members will be directed to so that they can log in when they try to access member’s only content
   • Note: This page should not be directly linked on your page as the place for your members to log in through
2. Insert 
   • You’ll need make sure your page is set up to allow you to add a short-code, this could mean that you are using a HTML/CODE/Text tab, adding an element or a block based on the type of editor you are using.
3. Publish the page
4. Make note of the URL.
5. Click on “Settings” in your WordPress Dashboard menu on the left
6. Click on “Members Only”
7. Under the “Post Type Default Options” section, enter the URL for your login page in the “Default Redirect For Members Only Pages”
8. Click on “Save Changes”

Set up the Create/Reset password page

1. Add a new page to your site. This will be the page that a member will be directed to when they are setting up their access for the first time or resetting their access.
   • Note: Do not directly link to this page, Membee generates unique links for your members to reset their password, by going directly to this page, it will not have the information to show which member it is resetting/setting up their password
2. Insert 
   • You’ll need make sure your page is set up to allow you to add a short-code, this could mean that you are using a HTML/CODE/Text tab, adding an element or a block based on the type of editor you are using.
3. Publish the page
4. Make note of the URL.
5. Log into Membee
6. Click on your avatar in the top right hand corner
7. Select “Admin Settings”
8. Click on “System Defaults”
9. Click on “Manage” for “Formatting Defaults”
10. Scroll to the bottom of the page
11. Enter the URL into the “Change Password” field
12. Save it

Customize the styles for the login (Optional)

As the login is hosted in an iframe via your Membee site, you can not style it directly from the page within your WordPress site. However, you still have complete control over the styles by entering them into the program you created in Membee. The best part is as soon as you save you changes the login in instantly updated – no further steps are needed :)

1. In Membee, click on your avatar in the top right hand corner
2. Select “Admin Settings”
3. Click on “People & Organizations”
4. Click on the “Manage” button for “Login & Access Roles”
5. Click on the “Actions” button to the right of the program you added
6. Select “Edit”
7. Enter in your styling.  In addition to the styles that are listed, you will see a “Stylesheet” field. You can use your developer tools to find and override styles in this box.
8. When you click on Save or Save and Close the styles will be instantly updated on your login page on your site.

Set up the redirects in Membee

If you’re using Membee’s WordPress Login plugin feature to restrict members only, you can set the widget to use the same login page. This means that if the member logs in through the Profile, they’ll be logged into the members only sections. Here are links to the instructions on how to set this up for each widget:

• Directory
• Profile
• EBilling
• Event

Test the login

Now that you have your program in Membee set up and your plugins installed on your WordPress site you are ready to test :) The steps below will take you through the information you need to set up a test member and go through basic and our recommended testing.

Review and customize the email templates

If you are launching login on your WordPress site for the first time, we recommend that you customize the message that is sent to your members when they are initially set up with a login or when they have their login information reissued.

1. In Membee, click on your avatar in the top right hand corner of the page
2. Click on “Admin Settings”
3. Click on “Email”
4. Click on the “Manage” button for “System Email Templates”
5. There are two templates that you will want to customize:
   • Create an Initial Member Login – this is the email that will be sent when you give a person access for the first time.
   • Reset a Member Login- this is the email that will be sent to your member when:
     • You click on the “Send Reset Login Email” link from within the “Access Information” panel on their record in Membee
     • The member clicks on the “I can’t Login” link on the login screen
6. In Search, search for one of the emails detailed above
7. Customize the settings/email
   
   1. The “From” address will be automatically set to be the email address found in “System Settings”. If you would like to change it you can do so.
   2. Enter the URL you would like the member to go to once they set up or reset their password. In the example above, the member will be taking to the member’s only page we’ve set up once they successfully set up their password. If you don’t add any information into this field, Membee will use the URL found in System Settings (which is usually your home page for your website)
   3. The “Reply To” address will be automatically set to be the email address found in “System Settings”. If you would like to change it you can do so.
   4. Set the subject you want the email to have
   5. Customize the message. Any fields you see in brackets such as {ContactFirstName} are merge fields. This means that the email will use information from Membee in the email, for example {ContactFirstName} would be replaced with the fist name of the person the email is sent to. You can insert other merge fields into the message by clicking on the “Insert” menu and selecting a field
   6. DO NOT DELETE THIS LINK – this is what will allow your member to set up their password.
   7. When you are done customizing the email, save it

Set up a test member

Important: The admin username used to access your WordPress site cannot be the same as the username used in ANY records in Membee.

Please ensure that you don’t lock yourself out of your WordPress site’s Dashboard. If you use the same email address that is used to access Membee (by the staff, any user or your test record in Membee) as you use to log into your WordPress site as the site’s administrator and you login to the site, WordPress will do exactly what you’ve asked it to do. WordPress will replace the “Administrator” role with the role data it is getting from Membee and this will effectively lock you out of you site’s dashboard by replacing your “Administrator” role with a “Subscriber” role. Not good.

1. Log into Membee
2. Click on People
3. Click on the “Add Person” button.
4. Select the appropriate entry form.  In this case any form set up to add a basic or non-member person will work.
5. Fill in the details, for example a name and email address
6. Save it
7. This will open the record for you. Go to the “Login & Access Roles” panel
8. Click on the “Activate” button.
   1. Check to make sure the email address it is sending to is correct and click on “Submit” This will send out the “Create an Initial Member Login” email. Once you receive this email, it will contain the link to your “Create/Reset” login page you created. Click on that link to set up your password.
   2. You will immediately see the program “Member Service Center” added. This is a default Membee program and needs to be on the members record so it’s important to not delete or modify it.
   3. Click on the “Add Program” link.
   4. Select the Program you created
9. Click on Save and Close. This will return you to the member’s record and you will now see your program added
10. If you have not set up Roles your test person is ready.
11. If you have set up Roles
    1. Hover over the program and click on the edit link.
    2. Add in the roles you have created
    3. Click on “Save and Close”
    4. Remember – when you log into your site with your test person the roles will be created and available in the Member Access Control that you should see when you add/edit a page. This will then allow you to assign those roles to the content on your site.

Basic Testing

1. Set a page to be members only. (you should see a panel on a page called Member Access Control, click in the Members Only checkbox)
2. Logout as your site admin
3. Go to the page you created and log in using the email address and password for the test member you setup

Strongly Recommended Testing

This is what we’d test before we sent any announcements to members:

1. Pretend you are the member
2. Find that “Create an Initial Member Login” email Membee sent you
3. Check the wording – need to change something? Revisit Review and customize the email templates above
4. Click the link in the email and make sure the Create/Reissue page your created loads
5.  Go to the page you set to “members only”
6. The Member Login page should appear
7. Login using the test member you setup
8. You should be logged in and redirected to the page your designated as “members only”

Launch

IMPORTANT: This is the final step and is something that should be done by the staff of the association or chamber that you are working with. This involves customizing the email templates that will be sent when a member is issued and username and password as well as running some steps to send these emails out. This is not a step that is usually done by the WordPress developer.

Enable users

**If you are implementing the login to give your member’s access for the first time we highly recommend that you have completed all your testing (such as setting up the profile, testing your integrated login etc.) before you take these steps – these steps should be the final steps you take to launch your new feature(s) on your site. If your members have never been activated, processing these reports will send the “Create an Initial Member Login” email out – this should only be done when your site is live and you are ready to grant access to your site to your members.

This is one of the most common ways to run the report, but not the only way to run the report so if you need to select other filters and settings you can do so. The steps listed below will set up access to your member’s only section on your WordPress site.

1. In Membee, click on ‘Reports”
2. Search for and select the “Web Application Access” report
3. Under filters
   1. Organization/Person Statuses: set to the status(es) for the members you want to grant access to
   2. If you have members who are organizations and you only want to give access to employees based on their contact type (such as “Main Contact” then go to the “Employee Contact Types” filter and select the contact types you want to enable access for. If you want to enable access for all employees, leave this filter blank.
   3. You can also set any other filters on the report that you need to get the list of members you want to grant access to
4. Under Settings
   1. Program Access: Set to “Grant”
   2. Resend to people who have not activated their login- by default this will be checked so this does not need to be un-checked
      Programs:
   3. Add Member Service Center (This is a Membee system requirement)
   4. Add the program you created
   5. Roles: What you set here will depend on what has been set up in the program you created and what you would like to grant access to
   6. If you, or your web developer have not set up any roles (click here for information on what roles are used for) then you can leave this blank.
   7. If you, or your web developer have set up roles, you will want to select the role you want to grant the people you are running the report to grant access to.
5. Run the report. This will give you a PDF.
6. Review the PDF carefully. This will give you a list of people who you will be granting access to . This means that when you process the report they will receive the “Create an Initial Member Login” email you set up here.
7. If everything on the PDF report is correct, click on the “Process” link to activate your members and send the “Create an Initial Member Login” email.

Frequently asked questions

Set up my site page so that you need to login to access the information

1. Log into your WordPress site and add/edit a page
2. On the right hand side you will see the Member Access Control
3. To make a page so that it is only accessible to members, click in the “Only accessible by members?” check box
4. If you have implemented additional roles, you will see them listed as well and can check the additional information to grant access (you can find more about this here)

I see a message that the “Information required for this process is missing when I go to the page I set up the reset password plugin on

If you go to the page you’ve added the membee_reset / code to, the page where members will go to to set up their password for the first time or to reset their password directly you will see something similar to the following:

Going directly to the URL you have placed the plugin code on allows you to confirm that the information is displaying, but as you have accessed the page directly it:

• Displays the message that it is in preview mode ” Information required for this process is missing. The widget is in preview mode only”
• You wouldn’t be able to set up a username and password.

This is because the page is only part of the information needed, when a member goes to set up or reset their access they will never be coming directly to the page you have set up, they will always be coming from a link that was sent in the “Create an Initial Member Login” or “Reset a Member Login” emails, or from the link in their profile that allows them to change their password or access method. For example, and email that is sent would look something like this

http://www.yoursite.com/yourpage?value=LA36ISfMNXrBoylsG1ObQs6b7m5q…

The information that you see starting at the “?” is the query code the page needs to understand who is setting up or resetting their access. Without this information the page would not know who was setting up information and this is why going directly to the page rather then using a link in the access emails or profile will display as noted above.

Set up members so that they can log into our site

1. Activate the member
2. Click on “Add Program”
3. Select the Program that was set up for your WordPress site.

How to I adjust my member’s permissions?

1. In Membee, search for and select the name of the person you want to adjust the permissions for
2. Go to the “Login & Access Roles” panel
3. Click on the “Actions” button to the right of the program you added
4. Select “Edit”
5. Select the role(s) you want to add
6. Click on “Save”

When I go to log into a members only page I see membee_login / not the login screen

This usually means that you are missing settings in the Membee Plugin on your WordPress site or the plugin has not been activated

1. In WordPress, go to your dashboard then plugins
2. Make sure that Membee Login has been activated
3. If it has, check the settings
4. Click on Settings
5. Select Membee Login
6. Check the Client ID, Secret and Application ID are correct. You can find this information in Membee by
   1. In Membee, click on your avatar in the top right hand corner of the page
   2. Click on “People & Organizations”
   3. Click on the “Manage” button for “Login & Access Roles”
   4. Click on the “Actions” button for the program that was set up
   5. You will see the Client ID, Secret & Application ID