How to Start Membership Support Groups with WordPress

There are many ways to provide therapy online, from group appointment scheduling to organizing online meetings and building private communities within a membership website. Thanks to specialized WordPress membership plugins, you can easily sell paid memberships to various support groups – or provide consultations and meetings for free.

Why WordPress membership plugins are ideal for support groups

WordPress membership plugins are made with specific features in mind that truly matter to support groups, including community building, ease of access online, and managing group dynamics.

Support groups are attended on a regular basis.

WordPress membership plugins are made so that people can regularly attend one safe space without registering each time anew. They will have their account with login credentials, possibly a user profile and helpful tools. Members can also easily set up recurring payments for their chosen support group subscription.

Participation in the discussions is essential.

For support groups, communication and engagement in discussions is key for getting the most out of the therapy, learning new coping skills, or simply getting immersed in communication. Membership WordPress plugins make it easy to integrate public discussions or personal messaging into the community space. For example, with ARMember, you can choose to integrate social, community and forum features with the BuddyBoss add-on or BuddyPress integration.

Create multiple support groups for different needs.

Just like any support group, a healthy online community thrives on good group dynamics. With a WordPress membership plugin, it’s easy to create multiple groups based on specific interests, at the same time enabling people to switch groups when they feel a need for that.

How to create a support membership group with WordPress using ARMember

To start with a membership site for a support group, use the ARMember plugin, with tons of ultimate features, including sharing experiences in a group, getting organized, and managing members.

Setting up the membership plugin

Once installed and activated on your WP dashboard, it guides you through the major setup steps with a handy wizard.

Step 1. Choose your preferences for the new member’s registration (e.g. automatically, manually, or by email.).

Step 2. Choose currency for payments.

Step 3. Choose a membership plan type (a subscription, free, paid). Add a plan name and its cost.

Step 4. Set up payment options (PayPal and wire transfer methods are available even with a free ARMember plugin version).

Step 5. Set up basic content restriction rules so that only paid support group members can access the content on specific pages. If your site pages for this are not set up yet, you can add them later.

Step 6. Your membership area is added – the plugin will generate member login, member registration, and edit profile pages. 

You will simply need to copy the generated link and continue making further edits to the pages. 

The ARMember WordPress membership plugin supports many page builders, including Elementor, Divi, Bricks, the WordPress block editor, and more, allowing you to seamlessly add and customize all types of registration and member sign-in forms.

For example, it’s very easy to add and customize membership forms with the default WordPress patterns if you prefer not using any extra page builders. 

To customize colors and fonts of the membership forms across your site, you need to go to the general settings of the ARMember plugin and find the ‘Frontend font settings’ in the General settings.

Once the basic configuration of the plugin is complete, you’ll be able to discover all other options and features by navigating to the actual plugin dashboard.

For example, you can preview all your membership subscription plans, set up content restriction rules page by page for every created plan specifically, manage form creation settings, and more.

Summing up, you will be able to create restricted content pages for support groups on your website, create membership subscription plans for potential members to choose from, and build member subscription pages. And these are just the basics!

What are other cool things for members?

• Public member profile.
• The usage of gravatars (or avatars enabled via extra connected plugins like BuddyPress).
• Learn the membership materials by themselves or connect in groups with other members.
• Interact with each other and a facilitator just like in any modern social network.

For membership site owner:

• Integrated advanced spam protection.
• The option to auto-lock shared accounts to protect your content.
• Advanced control of how new members get approved.
• Simple settings to customize default access rules to newly added content.
• Multiple layers for login security.
• Import and export member data to CSV or XML to analyze your support group dynamics.

Member support groups & community 

As a therapist or group facilitator, you have many ways to bring several people together online and provide treatment to them as a group. Group appointment scheduling and membership groups are one of them.

As for the second option, using the Social Community add-on for ARMember, you can add many social features, one of them being member groups. It enables you to create various member groups within your entire membership website, fostering communication, learning coping skills and simply communicating with each other. More than that, members can send each other private messages, share public posts, like the posts of others and do all the things you’d expect from a normal social network.

For community creation needs, you can use various member directory templates, with more or less focus on every member, speakers, or facilitator.

During group meetings, participants can work through the step-by-step materials, connect with each other or the therapist. A therapist, speaker, or facilitator can share public posts in the community, manage community activities, and talk to members.

Another option for organizing support groups with ARMember is using the Group/Umbrella addon. It allows you to sell memberships with a specific number of “group seats” for “child” members, which allows “parent” members to select the number of child seats during signup. It is ideal for families, teams, or organizations that want to share a membership or join a specific support group. The price of such a membership can be adjusted based on the number of child members included.

Concluding on creating a membership support group with WordPress

Creating online support groups on WordPress with ARMember is not just an easy task, there are multiple ways and plugin extensions that allow therapists and facilitators to shape the member interaction environment:

1. Members can easily set up recurring payments for their chosen support group subscription for consistent participation (and steady revenue for you).
2. ARMember integrates with social/community features through add-ons like BuddyPress to enable various features, such as public discussions, forums, and private messaging.
3. It makes it easy to create multiple membership groups for different needs, serving specific support needs within the larger community.

Read also: 

• 10 Free WordPress Plugins for Membership Sites
• How to Monetize a Website Without Ads in 2024 [Proven Ways]