Monday, May 21, 2018

WordPress Plugin: Members (by Justin Tadlock)

Chris Lema mentioned this plugin in his blog "Comparing WordPress Membership Plugins" ~ He wrote "Justin Tadlock’s Members is free. 100% free. That means you can download it for free. You can also review the code for free. You can change it for free. You can install it on 1 site for free – and you can do it on 100 sites for free. That’s amazing, isn’t it. And it’s easy, quick to install, intuitive and all that!" Members is Lema's first choice in his recommendations where Price is the primary consideration.


When adding the Members plugin from the WordPress repository, I found it to be very similar to Simple Membership in appearance. The names and logos are very similar!

But, Members has over 100K active installations.

The first think I look for, now, is whether a plugin automatically adds new pages. Members does not add any pages and does not modify the default menu at the top of the page. It does not add new widgets, either.

It does add two new menu choices to the dashboard:

  • Roles
  • Add New Roles
Also, the profile page, for editing users, now has a checkbox field to select one or more roles for users.


Finally, under the settings menu, a new choice is added: "Members." This has two tabs, one for "General" and one for "Add-ons."

Like other free membership plugins, Tadlock monitizes his efforts by selling premium Add-ons. Currently there are three premium add-ons and one free:

  • Admin Access ($10)
  • Core Create Caps ($10)
  • Role Levels ($10)
  • Role Hierarchy (Free)
Tadlock also charges $29-$49/year for support and charges for access to his support forum. I find that last part interesting. 

Further investigation revealed that Tadlock also creates/sells themes to go with plugins. and add-ons. His site is THEME HYBRID ~ Plugins & Themes.



The bottom line is that this plugin does NOT support paid memberships, which is what started this search. From that perspective, this plugin is useless to me right now.

PS: I did install it on another site, and found that roles created and assigned were retained even after I deactivated the plugin.

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