When you restrict content by membership level in Paid Memberships Pro, those restrictions apply to all users, including the authors who wrote the content. On multi-author membership sites, this can lock contributors out of their own posts if their membership lapses or if they are not assigned to the required level.

This code recipe overrides PMPro’s access check for post authors, allowing authors to be able to view their own content regardless of their current membership status.

Do You Need This Recipe?

This recipe is a good fit if:

• You run a multi-author site where contributors write content that is gated behind a membership level.
• You want authors to be able to review, edit, and preview their own posts without needing an active membership.
• A contributor’s membership has expired, but you still want them to access content they authored.

If all of your authors are permanently assigned a membership level with access, this recipe is not needed.

About the Code Recipe

PMPro uses the pmpro_has_membership_access_filter filter to determine whether a given user can view a post. This recipe hooks into that filter and checks whether the current user is the author of the post being requested. If they are, it sets their access to true regardless of the normal membership check.

This recipe grants view access only. It does not affect any other users or any other posts. It also does not change what a member can do on your site or modify their membership level.

Non-authors and posts that the user did not write still follow the normal membership rules.

The Code Recipe

Adding the Recipe to Your Website

You can add this recipe to your site by creating a custom plugin or using the Code Snippets plugin available for free in the WordPress repository. Read this companion article for step-by-step directions on either method.

No customizations are needed for this code recipe.