Sometimes you may need to grant access to a specific product, group of products, or product category only to certain site members and hide them from the rest of the visitors. You can do this using X-Cart's user memberships feature.
Note: Google will still index hidden products and categories, so hiding them from some customers will not affect the ranks.
Membership-Specific Access to Categories
To hide a category and grant access to it only to certain store members:
Locate a category you want to edit in the categories list of your store's Admin area and open it for editing.
X-Cart 5.4.x - Catalog > Categories
X-Cart 5.5.x - Catalog > Categories
Locate the Memberships field on the Category info page, click on it, and select a value from the drop-down:
Finally, click Update to save the changes.
Membership-Specific Access to Products
To grant access to the products within a category to a specific membership level:
On the product listing page of your store's Admin area (Catalog -> Products), select products from the category you require.
For example, you can do this by specifying the category name in the category selector (where it says "Any Category") and clicking Search:
In the Bulk Edit drop-down at the bottom of the page, select Price and Membership:
You will see a new page where you can bulk edit product options.Locate Memberships and click to specify the membership(s) you need.
Save your changes.
That's all. The category and its products are now available for viewing and ordering only to the customers of a specific membership level. A customer with this membership level should be logged in to access this category/product.
If a non-member tries to open a members-only category page using a direct link, the store will show a "page not found" error. With a members-only product, the store will show an "access denied" error with a link to the Contact Us page so the user can contact the store administrator and request the required membership.
Note: A store administrator can only give membership to registered customers (Access Level - Customer) but not anonymous visitors.
Related pages: