How to Design Your Membership Levels Page

We have several tutorials for altering the membership levels page using the default shortcode or the Advanced Levels Page Add On. This post summarizes several methods to:

• Alter the display order
• Dynamically display levels based on the current user’s level
• Hide levels from display (without blocking registration)
• Bypass the levels page entirely

It’s a useful guide if you aren’t quite sure of a method to use and want to explore your options.

Reordering the Membership Levels Display

Navigate to the Memberships > Membership Levels page in the WordPress Admin. Here you can drag and drop the membership levels into the order you would like them to display when using the default shortcode or the Advanced Levels Page Add On.

If you are using the [pmpro_advanced_levels] shortcode, you can also specify the levels="2,4,1" attribute to force the display in your preferred order. This method will simultaneously reorder the display AND filter out levels you do not want to display.

Dynamically Display Certain Levels Based on the Current User’s Active Level

Some sites would like to customize which levels are offered based on the current logged-in member’s active membership level. There are two methods to dynamically alter the display of the membership levels page: using the membership shortcode or using the pmpro_levels_array filter.

Hide Free Levels from the Membership Levels Display

Here’s a tutorial for hiding all the free levels from display. This is a useful method if you have free levels that are reserved for specific customers or promotions, etc.

Hiding Specific Levels (by ID) from the Membership Levels Display

To hide levels using the [pmpro_advanced_levels] shortcode, just exclude them from thelevels="1,2,3" attribute of the shortcode. Easy!

If you are using the default levels page shortcode, you have two options for hiding levels from the output:

Option 1: Define hidden levels in a custom function.

The code recipe below allows you to define specific level IDs that will not be shown on your membership levels page.

Update line 17 with a comma-separated list of level IDs to hide.

You can then modify the list items to add the appropriate links for your membership site.

Option 2: Add a setting to “hide” levels from display on the Memberships > Edit Level admin.

This code recipe adds a new level setting to hide the display. If you expect to be manipulating level display fairly often and would prefer to do so via settings in the dashboard vs. code, this is the recipe for you. After installing the customization code, just navigate to Memberships > Edit Level and set “Show level” to “Yes” or “No”.

You can then modify the list items to add the appropriate links for your membership site.

Skipping the Membership Levels Page

If you have only one public level of membership, this method will redirect members from the membership levels page directly to membership checkout for the defined PMPRO_DEFAULT_LEVEL.

Skipping the Membership Checkout Process

As with the “skipping” option above, this method will allow you to use the default WordPress registration process (or another plugin or theme’s registration process) and apply a default level of membership.