An Easier Way to Preview Your Site as a Member or Non-Member

by Kimberly Coleman | Newsletter

Here are a few methods to preview your site as a member or non-member without ever having to log out of your administrator account.

Use Separate Browsers or “Private” Browsing

If you have a simple site with a single membership level, one of the easiest ways to preview your site as a member is give yourself as admin the single level. Just navigate to “Edit My Profile” and change your “Membership Level”.

Then, to preview your site as a non-member or site visitor, use either a separate web browser or your favorite browser’s “Private Window” or “Incognito Mode” option. Browsing your site in this mode is a fast way to see the non-member experience without having to log out of your admin account.

pmpro_chrome-private-browsingHow to Enable Private Browsing

  • Chrome: Click the Menu Button > “New Private Window” or Ctrl+Shift+N (PC) and ⌘+Shift+N (Mac)
  • Safari: Click “File” > “New Private Window” or ⌘+Shift+N (Mac)
  • Firefox: Click the Menu Button > “New Private Window” or “File” > “New Private Window” or Ctrl+Shift+P (PC) and ⌘+Shift+P (Mac)
  • Microsoft Edge: Click the Menu Button > “New InPrivate Window” or Ctrl+Shift+P (PC)

Remember that even though you are logged in as an administrator account you do not inherently have a membership level so you may want to create a hidden membership level that has access to everything for your admin account.

The caveat to this approach is that you cannot quickly preview your site as a “logged in” non-member (a user account with no membership level or a cancelled/expired membership).

Use a “User Switching” Plugin

If you have a few levels of membership that you would like to be able to easily preview, the recommended approach is the User Switching plugin by John Blackbourn. This plugin allows you to stay logged in as your admin account, but preview the site as if you were logged in as another account.

user-switching-1For this approach, I recommend setting up a unique user account for each level of membership offered (name your dummy accounts by level name such as “PMPro Plus Tester” and “PMPro Core Tester”). You can also set up a dummy account for a user with no membership level.

Then, just navigate to the Users list in WordPress, locate the account you want to preview and click the “Switch To” link. You can easily switch back to your administrator account by clicking the “Switch back to (display name” link at the very bottom of your website.

The caveat to this approach is that you cannot preview your site as a “logged out” site visitor. Also, each dummy account will need its own email address. If you don’t have the ability to set up a bunch of dummy email accounts, you can get around this by using an email alias (email+otherstuff@domain.com). Just add the “+” then anything you want to your email address before the “@”.

These are the methods we use here at PMPro to preview our site and get a feel for the member experience. If you have another approach to recommend, post a comment below. Thanks!

v1.8 Beta Download Available Now — Full Release in 1 Week

by Jason Coleman | About PMPro

Paid-Memberships-Pro_v1-8Paid Memberships Pro v1.8 is ready to download.

We’re releasing the early beta version download to users on our site before making the update publicly available on the WordPress Plugins Repository.

Why Beta? Because it’s a big update.

We’ve deployed v1.8 on a few closely monitored client sites and are resolving any small bugs. If you would like to be part of this beta, you can download v1.8 now.

To begin using v1.8, use an FTP client or similar tool to change the folder name of ‘paid-memberships-pro’ in your ‘/wp-content/plugins’ folder to ‘paid-memberships-pro-old’. Then you can upload the newly downloaded ‘paid-memberships-pro’ v1.8 plugin folder to that directory. Renaming the previous version simply gives you the ability to revert back if necessary.

The full list of updates and fixes is detailed below. Most important to note are that v1.8 has overhauled the integration of payment gateways. This means that gateways are now “modularized” and should make it easier for us or other developers to contribute new gateways. We’ll be drafting a new doc on how to add gateways to Paid Memberships Pro shortly.

This release also offers better handling of member cancellations. There are some fixes for currency handling as well as translation/localization updates and a new German translation.

Finding (and squashing) bugs.

If you encounter any bugs while using v1.8, please post as comments here or on GitHub.

What’s New and What’s Updated?

  • ENHANCEMENT: Payment gateway classes updated so all settings and checkout fields are processed via the gateway class file. This will make it easier to maintain, update, and add new gateways.
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added a pmpro_after_membership_level_profile_fields hook after the “Membership Level” field dropdown on the edit profile page.
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added new statuses for orders when cancelled. cancelled = cancelled by user on cancel page or via gateway, cancelled_admin = cancelled by an admin, expired = cancelled via expiration script, level_change = user upgraded/downgraded to a different level.
  • ENHANCEMENT: All gateways use the $pmpro_currency global instead of getting the value via pmpro_getOption.
  • ENHANCEMENT: Changing South African Rand (ZAR) to use the symbol R to the left of prices. (Thanks, Rasada)
  • BUG: Fixed some translation issues on the checkout page and in level cost text. (Thanks, Jenkisan)
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added plural forms of Day, Week, Month, Year to es_ES translation. Other translation files will need to as well.
  • BUG: Fixed bug where the $short parameter of pmpro_getLevelCost wasn’t shortening the output in some cases. (Thanks, Kimberly Coleman)
  • BUG: Fixed warning in membership dropdown on edit user/profile page. (Thanks, Thomas Sjolshagen)
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added German (de_DE) translation files. (Thanks, Cedros)
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added settings links to plugins page.
  • BUG: Fixed bug in Safari for iOS where checkout submission would fail after choosing “Not Now” when prompted to save the card.
  • ENHANCEMENT: Added user row actions to the members list and orders list in the dashboard. Add actions using the pmpro_memberslist_user_row_actions and pmpro_orders_user_row_actions filters which work the same as the core WP user_row_actions filter.

Download v1.8 BETA now