groups / readme.txt

readme.txt in Groups – Memberships and Access Control 4.7.1, at readme.txt

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1	=== Groups - Memberships and Access Control ===
2	Contributors: itthinx, proaktion
3	Donate link: https://www.itthinx.com/shop/
4	Tags: groups, access, access control, member, membership
5	Requires at least: 6.7
6	Tested up to: 7.1
7	Requires PHP: 7.4
8	Stable tag: 4.7.1
9	License: GPLv3
10
11	Turn your site into a powerful membership solution. Manage members, teams and access to content easily.
12
13	== Description ==
14
15	### What is Groups? ###
16
17	The Groups plugin for WordPress is an essential tool that helps you organize users on your website. Think of it like sorting people into different clubs or teams, where each club has its own set of rules about who can access and do what.
18
19	### Why use it? ###
20
21	This plugin is very useful if you want to control who can see certain content or perform specific actions on your website. It helps you to keep some parts of your website exclusive to specific groups or to give special rights to some users.
22
23	Groups works great with WooCommerce, so you can make some products only available to members of certain groups.
24
25	### What it Does ###
26
27	It allows you to create groups, assign users to these groups, and set permissions for what each group can do or see on your site.
28
29	### Ease of Use ###
30
31	The Groups plugin works within the familiar WordPress Dashboard, so you do not need to learn something completely new. Clean views and clear functions make it quick and easy to work with.
32
33	### Control Content ###
34
35	You can make parts of your website visible to members of specific groups only, which is great for managing exclusive areas and products. You can protect whole pages, products and other types of content. You can also protect sections within pages.
36
37	### Control Permissions ###
38
39	Define what actions users in particular groups can perform, based on standard WordPress capabilities and custom capabilities provided by plugins.
40
41	### In a Nutshell ###
42
43	The Groups plugin makes managing your WordPress site easier, especially if you need to control who can do what or see what. It is designed to be easy to use, reducing the complexity of user management and content access.
44
45	Groups integrates with [WooCommerce](https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/) to protect access to products, so that certain products can be purchased by members only.
46
47	Enhanced functionality is available via the [WooCommerce Marketplace](https://woocommerce.com/vendor/itthinx/) and [Extensions](https://www.itthinx.com/product-category/groups/) for Groups.
48
49	### Key Features ###
50
51	#### Membership Management ####
52
53	You can put users into different groups, similar to assigning them to different classes or teams.
54
55	#### Content Access Control ####
56
57	You can decide that only specific groups can see certain content, posts, pages or products. If you are not in the right group, you will not see that protected content.
58
59	#### Capabilities ####
60
61	You can assign special rights to users based on which group they are a member of.
62
63	### Framework ###
64
65	Groups is designed as an efficient, powerful and flexible solution for group-oriented memberships and content access control.
66
67	It provides group-based user membership management, group-based capabilities and access control for content, built on solid principles.
68
69	Groups is light-weight and offers an easy user interface, while it acts as a framework and integrates standard WordPress capabilities and application-specific capabilities along with an extensive API.
70
71	### Documentation ###
72
73	The official documentation is located at the [Groups Documentation](https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/) pages.
74
75	### Funding and Sponsors ###
76
77	Your support matters!
78
79	By getting an official extension or contributing, you help fund the work that is necessary to maintain and improve Groups.
80
81	- Contribute directly to the Bitcoin address bc1q7klf9ge8gvtl4h4qlh6c73tgk0cdehfv5vcq0g where sats received are used to fund developers who help to maintain and develop Groups
82	- Purchase an official [Extension for Groups](https://www.itthinx.com/product-category/groups/)
83	- Purchase an extension on the [WooCommerce Marketplace](https://woocommerce.com/vendor/itthinx/)
84	- Sponsor the development of new features: [get in touch](https://www.itthinx.com/contact/)
85
86	### Comprehensive Features ###
87
88	Groups is powerful and effective, yet simple and easy to use. While its flexibility covers a wide range of functions, some of the most commonly used aspects include:
89
90	#### User groups ####
91
92	- Supports an unlimited number of groups
93	- Provides a Registered group which is automatically maintained
94	- Users can be assigned to any group
95	- Users are added automatically to the Registered group
96
97	#### Groups hierarchy ####
98
99	- Supports group hierarchies with capability inheritance
100
101	#### Group capabilities ####
102
103	- Integrates standard WordPress capabilities which can be assigned to groups and users
104	- Supports custom capabilities: allows to define new capabilities for usage in plugins and web applications
105	- Users inherit capabilities of the groups they belong to
106	- Groups inherit capabilities of their parent groups
107
108	#### Access control ####
109
110	Access to posts, pages and custom post types can be restricted by group.
111
112	If access to a post is restricted to one or more groups, only users who belong to one of those groups may view the post.
113
114	Fully supports custom post types, so that access to post types such as products or events can easily be restricted.
115
116	- Built-in access control that allows to restrict access to posts, pages and custom content types to specific groups and users only
117	- Control access to content by groups: shortcodes allow to control who can access content on posts, show parts to members of certain groups or to those who are not members -
118	Shortcodes: [groups_member], [groups_non_member]
119	- Control access to content by capabilities: show (or do not show) content to users who have certain capabilities -
120	Shortcodes: [groups_can], [groups_can_not]
121	- Blocks: The Groups Member block allows to restrict the visibility of its content to members of selected groups.
122	The Groups Non-Member block hides its content from members of chosen groups.
123	The blocks can be nested to provide multiple layers of access control to content.
124
125	#### Easy user interface ####
126
127	- Integrates nicely with the standard WordPress Users menu
128	- Provides an intuitive Groups menu
129	- Conceptually clean views showing the essentials
130	- Quick filters
131	- Bulk-actions where needed, for example apply capabilities to groups, bulk-add users to groups, bulk-remove users from groups
132
133	#### Sensible options ####
134
135	- Enable access restrictions by custom post type
136	- An optional tree view for groups can be shown when desired
137	- Provides its own set of permissions
138	- Administrator overrides for tests
139	- Cleans up after testing with a "delete all plugin data" option
140
141	#### Framework ####
142
143	- Groups is designed based on a solid and sound data-model with a complete API that allows developers to create group-oriented web applications and plugins
144
145	#### Multisite ####
146
147	- All features are supported independently for each blog in multisite installations
148
149	### Extensions ###
150
151	Enhanced functionality is available via official [Extensions](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/) for Groups.
152
153	Groups is a large project that is providing essential functionality to tens of thousands of sites since 2012. By getting an official extension, you help fund the work that is necessary to maintain and improve Groups.
154
155	- [Groups Integration for WooCommerce](https://woocommerce.com/products/groups-woocommerce/) : Sell Memberships with Groups and WooCommerce – the best Group Membership and Access Control solution for WordPress and WooCommerce.
156	- [WooCommerce Group Coupons](https://woocommerce.com/products/group-coupons/) : Automatically apply and restrict coupon validity for user groups. Offer exclusive, automatic and targeted discounts for your customers.
157	- [Groups Drip Content](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-drip-content/) : Release content on a schedule. Content dripping can be based on user account creation, group memberships and specific dates and times.
158	- [Groups File Access](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-file-access/) : Allows to provide file download links for authorized users. Access to files is restricted to users by their group membership.
159	- [Groups Restrict Categories](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-restrict-categories/) : Features access restrictions for categories, tags and other WordPress taxonomies, including support for custom post types and taxonomies.
160	- [Groups Forums](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-forums/) : A powerful and yet light-weight forum system for WordPress sites.
161	- [Groups Import Export](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-import-export/) : Provides import and export facilities around users and groups.
162	- [Groups Newsletters](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-newsletters/) : Newsletter Campaigns for Subscribers and Groups.
163	- [Groups Bundle](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/groups-bundle/) : The bundle includes several extensions at a considerable discount, compared to purchasing the extensions individually.
164	- [WooCommerce Product Search](https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-product-search/) : The perfect Search Engine helps customers to find and buy products quickly – essential for every WooCommerce store. The search engine honors access restrictions imposed by Groups and supports caching based on WordPress roles and memberships with Groups.
165	- [Restrict Payment Methods](https://woocommerce.com/products/restrict-payment-methods/) : Limit the use of WooCommerce Payment Methods by Group Memberships, Roles, Countries, and Order Amounts.
166	- [Widgets Control Pro](https://www.itthinx.com/shop/widgets-control-pro/) : An advanced Widget toolbox that adds visibility management and helps to control where widgets are shown efficiently.
167	- [Groups 404 Redirect](https://wordpress.org/plugins/groups-404-redirect/) : This plugin redirects 404’s caused by hits on pages that are protected by Groups.
168	- [Groups Blog Protect](https://wordpress.org/plugins/groups-blog-protect/) : The plugin protects a site so that only members can access its pages.
169	- [Groups bbPress](https://wordpress.org/plugins/groups-bbpress/) : Integrates Groups and bbPress so that all topics and replies related to protected forums are also protected automatically.
170
171	### Feedback ###
172
173	Feedback is welcome!
174
175	If you need help, have problems, want to leave feedback or want to provide constructive criticism, please do so here at the [Groups Plugin](https://www.itthinx.com/plugins/groups/) page.
176
177	Please try to solve problems there before you rate this plugin or say it doesn't work. There goes a _lot_ of work into providing you with free quality plugins! Please appreciate that and help with your feedback. Many thanks!
178
179	#### Stay informed or contribute ####
180
181	Follow @‌itthinx on [GitHub](https://github.com/itthinx/), [X - Twitter](https://twitter.com/itthinx), [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/itthinx/), [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@itthinx), [Rumble](https://rumble.com/user/itthinx), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@itthinx_official) for news related to Groups and other plugins.
182
183	Get development notifications, contribute code or open issues at the Groups repository on [GitHub](https://github.com/itthinx/).
184
185	### Translations ###
186
187	Translations have been contributed by many, including [Translators](https://github.com/itthinx/groups/blob/master/translators.txt) from the WordPress community, via the GitHub repository [Groups](https://github.com/itthinx/groups/), the section for Groups on [Translating WordPress](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/groups/) or as direct contributions.
188
189	Many thanks for your help!
190
191	== Installation ==
192
193	1. Upload or extract the `groups` folder to your site's `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. You can also use the Add new option found in the Plugins menu in WordPress.
194	2. Enable the plugin from the Plugins menu in WordPress.
195
196	== Frequently Asked Questions ==
197
198	= Where is the documentation? =
199
200	The official documentation is located at the [Groups Documentation](https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/) pages.
201
202	= Where can I get official extensions for Groups? =
203
204	Official extensions are distributed exclusively via the [WooCommerce Marketplace](https://woocommerce.com/vendor/itthinx/) and [Extensions](https://www.itthinx.com/product-category/groups/) for Groups.
205
206	= How can I help fund or contribute Bitcoin to the continued development of Groups? =
207
208	The success of Groups and its continued development depends on your support. There are several ways in which you can help fund the project:
209
210	- Purchase an official [Extension for Groups](https://www.itthinx.com/product-category/groups/)
211	- Purchase an extension on the [WooCommerce Marketplace](https://woocommerce.com/vendor/itthinx/)
212	- Contribute to the Bitcoin address bc1q7klf9ge8gvtl4h4qlh6c73tgk0cdehfv5vcq0g - sats received are used to fund developers who help to maintain and develop Groups
213
214	= I want to sell group memberships, which extension do I need? Does it support subscriptions? =
215
216	You can sell memberships with [Groups for WooCommerce](https://woocommerce.com/products/groups-woocommerce/), the best Group Membership and Access Control solution for WordPress and WooCommerce.
217	It also supports [WooCommerce Subscriptions](https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/).
218
219	= I have a question, where do I ask? =
220
221	For questions directly related to Groups, you can leave a comment at the [Groups Plugin](https://www.itthinx.com/plugins/groups/) page.
222
223	= How do I restrict access to a post? =
224
225	Let's assume you want members of the Premium group to be able to view some restricted posts.
226
227	- If you want to create a new protected post, simply go to Posts > Add New as usual and in the _Groups_ box input Premium in the _Read_ field. Save or publish your post.
228	- If you want to protect an existing post you can simply edit it, input Premium in the _Read_ field of the _Groups_ box and update the post.
229
230	In both cases, it doesn't matter if the Premium group already exists or not, if it doesn't, it will be created automatically.
231
232	If the Premium group already exists and you want to protect one or more existing posts in bulk, go to Posts, select all posts you want to protect and choose Edit in the Bulk Actions dropdown.
233	Now click Apply, select the Premium group and click Update.
234
235	After you publish or update your posts, only members of the Premium group will be able to see them.
236
237	= I want Advanced and Premium members, where the Premium members can access everything that Advanced members can access. How can I do that? =
238
239	Example: Advanced and Premium members
240
241	1. Go to Groups > Groups > New Group and add two new groups, let's call them Advanced and Premium - select Advanced as the Parent for the Premium group.
242	2. Now create an example post that only members of the Advanced group should be able to access and choose the Advanced group in the _Read_ field of the _Groups_ box.
243	3. Create another post for members of the Premium group and choose the Premium group for that post.
244	4. Assign test users to both groups, log in as each user in turn and see which posts will be accessible.
245
246	= How do I limit access to posts so that users in group A can not read the same as those in group B and vice-versa? =
247
248	Example: Green and Red members
249
250	1. Go to Groups > Groups > New Group and add two new groups, let's call them Green Members and Red Members
251	2. Now create an example post that only members of the Green Members group should be able to see and choose the Green Members group in the _Groups_ box.
252	3. Create another post for Red Members and choose the Red Members group for that post.
253	4. Assign a test user to each of the groups, log in as one of them and you will see that the member of the Green Members group will only have access to the post protected by that group but not to the post protected with the Red Members group and vice-versa.
254
255	= Are access restrictions for Custom Post Types (CPT) supported? =
256
257	Yes. Access restrictions can be turned on or off for specific CPTs on the Groups > Options page.
258
259	= How can I show groups that users belong to on their profile page in the admin section? =
260
261	Go to Groups > Options and enable the option under User profiles.
262
263	= Developers ... aka ... What about Groups' API? =
264
265	The Groups plugin provides an extensive framework to handle memberships, group-based capabilities and access control.
266
267	The API documentation page is available at [API](https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/api/).
268
269	Also refer to the official [Groups Plugin](https://www.itthinx.com/plugins/groups/) page to post your questions and the [Documentation](https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/) pages for Groups.
270
271	== Screenshots ==
272
273	See also the [Groups Documentation](https://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups/) pages and the [Groups Plugin](https://www.itthinx.com/plugin/groups/) page.
274
275	1. Groups - this is where you add and remove groups and assign capabilities to groups.
276	2. Capabilities - here you get an overview of the capabilities that are defined and you can add and remove capabilities as well.
277	3. Users - group membership is managed from the standard Users admin view.
278	4. Filter the list of users by one or more groups.
279	5. Add users to groups or remove them in bulk.
280	6. Groups a users belongs to shown in the user profile.
281	7. Filter posts by groups.
282	8. Add or remove access restrictions based on groups in bulk.
283	9. Restrict access on pages and posts (and other custom post types) ... you can restrict access to users who are members of one or more groups.
284	10. A post restricted to members of a Premium group only.
285	11. Usage of the [groups_member] and [groups_non_member] shortcodes to limit visibility of content to users who are members of a group or users who are not members of a group. Multiple comma-separated groups can be specified.
286	12. Usage of the [groups_can] and [groups_can_not] shortcodes. Limits visibility of enclosed content to those users who have the capability or those who do not. Multiple capabilities can be given.
287	13. Options - you can adjust the plugin's settings here.
288	14. More options.
289
290	== Changelog ==
291
292	For the full changelog see [changelog.txt](https://github.com/itthinx/groups/blob/master/changelog.txt).
293
294	== Upgrade Notice ==
295
296	This release has been tested with the latest version of WordPress.
297