General Settings

The General tab under Meta Membership > Settings holds the site-wide defaults for Meta Membership: where members land after login, how the dashboard behaves, and the default registration and membership rules. Several of these settings are defaults that individual membership types can override — the page marks those sections explicitly. Set sensible site-wide values here first, then override per type only where a type genuinely differs. See [Membership Types] for how overriding works.

Click Save Changes at the bottom when done.

Redirect After Login — the page a member is sent to immediately after logging in. Typically your dashboard page (e.g. Mime Dashboard).

Asynchronous emails — when ticked, Meta Membership sends emails in the background rather than during the page request. Recommended, as it keeps registration and renewal actions fast and avoids delays if your mail server is slow.

Default ‘access denied’ message — the content shown to a visitor who tries to view something they don’t have access to. A full editor is provided, so you can format the message and add media. The default text is “You do not have access to this content.” This is the site-wide fallback; individual restricted items can override it. See [Controlling Access to Content].

These settings control which tabs appear on the member dashboard and which page hosts it.

Show tabs — tick the tabs to display:

• Profile Tab — the member’s profile and editable details. Leave this unticked if another plugin already provides a member profile (for example Ultimate Member), to avoid showing two profile tabs.
• Membership Tab — membership status, type, and expiry
• Payments Tab — the member’s payment history

Untick any tab you don’t want members to see.

Dashboard Page — tells Meta Membership which page is your dashboard. Any page containing the [mime_dashboard] shortcode can serve as the dashboard.

• Auto-detect (recommended) — the plugin finds the page containing the shortcode automatically.
• If you maintain more than one such page, or auto-detect picks the wrong one, set it explicitly. Use Rescan to refresh detection after adding or moving the shortcode.

Admin Recipients — the email address (or addresses) that receive admin notifications such as system alerts and membership reminders. Enter one or more addresses separated by commas.

👉 This is distinct from the member-facing notification content, which is configured on the Notifications tab. This setting only controls who on your team receives admin alerts. See [Notifications].

👉 These settings can be overridden by membership type(s). They set the site-wide default; any membership type can specify its own behaviour instead.

These three checkboxes are independent and combine. A registration can be open to the public, held for admin approval, and require email validation all at once.

Admin-only registration — when ticked, only administrators can register members; there is no public self-registration. Untick to allow visitors to register themselves.

Require admin approval — when ticked, a new registration is held in the Pending state until an administrator approves it, rather than activating automatically. This is the approval step referenced in the membership lifecycle. See [How Meta Membership Works].

Require email validation — when ticked, a new registrant must validate their email address before their account is activated.

👉 These settings can be overridden by membership type(s). They set the site-wide default for the membership lifecycle.

Can Renew — when ticked, members can renew their own memberships. Unticking prevents user-initiated renewal; an admin can still create new cycles manually, and current memberships continue to expire normally. This is the system-wide default behind a membership type’s Renew Policy.

Renewal Mode — how expiry dates are calculated by default:

• Anniversary — expires 1 year after the join date
• Fixed Expiry — all memberships expire on the same calendar date each year
• Never expires — memberships don’t lapse

This is the system-wide default behind a membership type’s Renewal Mode.

Fixed Expiry — the day and month memberships expire each year (e.g. 1 July). Applies when Renewal Mode is Fixed Expiry.

Grace Period (days) — the period after expiry during which a member can renew without loss of continuity of membership. Members in the grace period can still access members-only resources. Ships defaulting to 30. This is the system-wide default behind a membership type’s Grace Period.

Everything in the Registration and Membership sections is a default. When you create a membership type, each of these settings offers a “Use system default” option that inherits the value you set here, plus the option to override it for that type. To revert an override, reselect “Use system default” on the type. This lets you manage common behaviour in one place while still allowing, say, a Student type with a different renewal rule.