Before enabling front-end submission, decide which submission model you want to use:
Paid Submission or Membership Submission.
Membership submission allows users to pay for display space on your website. A membership package gives the user permission to publish a specific number of listings for a specific period of time.
For example, a package can include 10 listings for 30 days. The number of listings included depends on the active membership package.
Important notes before enabling membership submission
Here are the most important rules to understand before using membership-based submission.
- Decide from the beginning how many free membership listings and free featured listings new users receive.
- Each new account receives the free membership limits set by the admin in Theme Options → Membership → Membership Settings.
- If you change the free membership limits later, the new values apply only to new accounts. Existing users are not updated automatically.
- Changing membership settings after users have already registered and submitted listings is not recommended. Existing accounts may need to be
manually edited from admin. - Membership features work with the Subscriber user role. For package expiration and membership rules to work correctly, users must have the
Subscriber role. - Users receive an email 3 days before their membership package expires. You can edit this email from Theme Options → Advanced → Email Management.
See the Email Management help article.
Step 1: Enable membership submission
Go to Theme Options → Membership → Membership Settings.
From this section, enable membership submission and configure the free membership options.
Free membership options
Free membership is applied automatically to new user accounts based on the values set in Theme Options → Membership → Membership Settings.
- Free listing expiration is calculated based on the property publish date plus the number of days set in admin.
- The user and admin are notified by email when a free listing expires.
- You can edit email content from Email Management.
- Free listings cannot be republished after expiration. The user must upgrade to a paid membership package to receive more active listing time.
Step 2: Create membership packages
Create membership packages from Admin Dashboard → Membership Packages.
A paid membership package includes the following options:
- Package name
- Payment cycle, such as day, week, month, or year
- Payment cycle value, such as 7 days, 1 month, or 1 year
- Number of listings included
- Number of featured listings included
- Number of images allowed per listing
- Package price
- The user type
that can see the package in the user dashboard - Option to show or hide the package in the user dashboard
- Payment processors such as PayPal,
Stripe, and
WooCommerce Payments
cannot process payments with 0 value. Do not create a paid package with a 0 price. - PayPal does not process packages with titles that contain characters such as . or –. Avoid using these characters in package names.
- If you enable only Wire Transfer, you can manually activate invoices with 0 payment, if needed. This is possible only because wire transfer invoices are manually controlled by the admin.
Step 3: Set payment options
After creating the membership packages, configure the payment method you want to use.
WPResidence supports:
- Recurring payments with the theme PayPal or Stripe merchants
- Non-recurring payments with PayPal, Stripe, Wire Transfer, or WooCommerce payments
Related payment setup guides:
How users buy, upgrade, or downgrade a package
Users can see available membership packages in their User Dashboard.
From this section, they can buy a package, upgrade to another package, or downgrade to a smaller package.
- The recurring checkbox is optional and applies only to PayPal or Stripe payments. When enabled, payment is taken automatically from the user account when the package reaches the expiration date.
- If the first payment fails through PayPal or Stripe, the user continues with the Free Membership package by default.
- If a recurring payment fails, the user is downgraded to the Free Membership package.
What happens when users change packages
When users buy, upgrade, or downgrade a membership package, the new package limits apply from the moment of purchase.
- When users buy or upgrade to a paid package, they receive the number of listings included in the new package.
- Listings do not sum. The new package replaces the old package.
- If a user already has published properties, those published properties are automatically deducted from the number of available listings in the new package.
- If a user deletes a property, that property is still counted as a used listing. The number of available listings does not increase after deletion.
- Users cannot have two active membership packages at the same time.
- When a user upgrades, the new package starts immediately, even if the previous membership still had days, weeks, months, or years remaining.
- If a user downgrades to a package with fewer listings than the number of currently published listings, all the user listings are set to Expired.
- After downgrade, the user can resubmit only the number of listings allowed by the current package.
- Users can make listings featured based on how many featured listings are included in their active package.
If a user has both published and expired listings, and then upgrades or downgrades the membership package, the published properties stay published only if they fit within the number of listings included in the new package. Expired listings stay expired.
Users receive an email 3 days before the membership package expires.
See also:
How to add a property
How to cancel a package
A one-time payment package is automatically canceled by Stripe or PayPal at the end of the package availability period.
A recurring Stripe payment can be canceled from the theme user dashboard. The package remains active until the end of the paid availability period and will not renew automatically after that.
A recurring PayPal subscription can be canceled only from the user PayPal account. The package remains active until the end of the paid availability period and will not renew automatically after that.
What happens if PayPal or Stripe payment fails
If the user package expires because the user did not renew, or because the recurring payment could not be processed, the package returns to Free Membership by default.
This usually happens when the user does not have enough funds in the payment account or the payment processor cannot complete the charge.
Expired listings
Listings are set to Expired and will no longer show on the front end in these cases:
- The user package reaches the expiration date and the user has not purchased a new package.
- The user selected recurring renewal, but the recurring payment failed.
- The user downgrades to a package with fewer listings than the number of published listings currently owned by the user.
When expired properties are resent for approval, the approval settings from
manual or automatic property approval
will apply.
How to change the membership expiration date format
The membership expiration date format uses the WordPress date format.
To change it, go to WordPress Admin → Settings → General and update the site date format.
