Access Control – Overview

Meta Membership controls who can see your content. Unlike the settings tabs, there’s no single access-control screen — access is set on the content itself, in two places:

• On posts and pages, via a permissions meta-box in the editor. See [Restricting Posts & Pages].
• On menu items, via visibility controls on each menu entry. See [Restricting Menu Items].

This page explains the concepts both share. The two linked articles cover the mechanics of each surface.

Both surfaces offer the same core question — who can access this? — answered by a single setting with escalating levels:

• Everyone — no restriction; visible to all visitors.
• Logged-out users — visible only to visitors who are not logged in (useful for sign-up prompts you want to hide from members).
• Logged-in users — any logged-in WordPress user.
• Logged-in members — logged-in users who are members, regardless of membership status.
• Logged-in members with an active membership — members whose membership is currently active (or in grace). This is the typical members-only setting.

Each step up is more restrictive than the last. Pick the lowest level that achieves what you want.

When you choose a member-level setting, you can narrow it further to specific membership types — for example, content visible only to active Clinical and Associate members.

The key rule, stated on the screen itself: leave all type checkboxes unchecked to allow all active membership types. Checking specific types restricts to only those types; checking none is the same as “any type.”

You control what a blocked visitor experiences:

• Show message — display a message in place of the content. You then choose the message type (the site-wide default, or a custom one).
• Redirect — send them to another page, which you pick.
• Show Page Not Found (404) — return a 404, so the content’s existence is hidden entirely.

The site-wide default message is set on the General settings page. See [General Settings].

If you also run Ultimate Member, you’ll notice its own restriction controls sit right alongside Meta Membership’s — Ultimate Member: Content Restriction appears below Meta Membership: Post Permissions in the post editor, and the same pairing shows on menu items. These are separate systems.

Use one or the other for any given item — not both. If both plugins try to gate the same post or menu link, the result is unpredictable and hard to debug: the outcome depends on which runs last and how each interprets the other’s state, and you’ll struggle to work out why content is or isn’t showing. Decide which plugin owns access control on your site and configure restrictions only in that one. Leave the other’s restriction controls untouched.

Because Meta Membership manages membership status directly, it’s the natural choice to own access control in a Meta Membership site, with [Role Sync Rules] keeping UM informed of roles for whatever UM does own (typically the member directory and profiles).

• Restrict individual posts and pages: [Restricting Posts & Pages]
• Restrict menu items: [Restricting Menu Items]
• Set the default denied-access message: [General Settings]