Migrate From Another Membership System to ONTRAPORT

About Membership Migration

Applies to: ONTRAPORT Plus and above.

ONTRAPORT customers often move their membership content protection systems to ONTRAPORT. Membership content protection systems protect content from the general public, only allowing access to specific pages to select members. This includes Wishlist, Membermouse, S2member, Memberium, Kajabi, DAP, OptimizePress and others. There are four primary components to migrating your membership content protection system.

Existing members, usernames and passwords: These are your customers who have access to your membership site. For your customers that are already members, you will most likely need to issue new usernames and passwords. Most ONTRAPORT users who migrate from another membership system alert the customer that they’re switching systems, send an email blast once the migration is complete and let their customers know how to change their username and password in the ONTRAPORT PilotPress customer center. If you absolutely want to maintain the same usernames and passwords for your customers, you will need to use the PilotPress settings and manually give each member access to the appropriate membership levels.
Membership Levels: This refers to the various levels of membership you have available for your customers. You will need to create the membership levels you have in ONTRAPORT. For example, you have a silver, gold and platinum program - that would be three membership levels. This could also include drip content levels. For example, if you provide new content once a month and you don’t want the customer to have access to the next month until it’s dripped out to them, then you’ll want to have 12 membership levels - one for each month.
Membership Content: This refers to your WordPress pages, post or entire categories of posts that are protected by your membership content protection system. You'll need to edit each page or post, mimicking the membership levels that existed in your previous system. For example, if you have a page that is only accessible by your gold members, you would need to check the Pilotpress membership level checkbox on the WordPress page.
Membership Drip: This term refers to the concept of ‘dripping’ new content to your members over a period of time. You will want to create a campaign that includes elements that give membership level access and an email that alerts the customer of the new content available.

This article covers the process you should follow to move your previous membership content protection system to ONTRAPORT. For the best outcome during your migration, we highly recommend following the listed order.

NOTE: Do NOT activate both membership plugins at the same time. Membership content protection plugins use the same WordPress user database. If you have both PilotPress and another membership content protection plugin or theme activated your members will experience login issues and content visibility issues. We highly recommend notifying your members that you are undergoing system maintenance and remove login abilities while you are migrating your membership system.

Integrate Your Website with ONTRAPORT and Create Membership Levels

First, you'll connect your existing WordPress website with ONTRAPORT and re-create your membership levels. Membership levels provide the access a person has to pages, posts, and content you have created in your WordPress site.

Then, on each protected post, page or custom post type you set the corresponding Access Level within the WordPress editor. ONTRAPORT can automate assigning contacts, partners and customers to their designated membership levels, allowing them to see the content.

Log into ONTRAPORT
Navigate to Administration > Advanced Features > Wordpress and toggle the feature on.
Now that the feature is on, go to Administration > Integrations > Wordpress Website
Click Create New under Existing WordPress Site
Click Create New under Existing WordPress Site
Enter the title of your WordPress Site for easy reference in the Untitled WordPress Site box (shown as "My Site" below). This title is not visible to your customers.
Enter the URL of your website in the Website URL field.
Under Membership Levels, enter the name of your new membership level. The names entered are not public to your customers. Repeat this step for as many membership levels are you'd like to recreate.
Click Pilot Press Download in the WordPress Plug-in/API Code section, download the PilotPress Plugin, or add it from your WordPress Administration section (search for PilotPress in your Plugins area).
Copy the App ID and API Key into a text document using Notepad (PC) or Text Editor (Mac) for later use.
Click Save.

Configure Your WordPress Site

Log into your WordPress site's Administration section.
Navigate to Plugins and select Add New
Upload the plugin if you downloaded it from ONTRAPORT or the WordPress respository by clicking Upload and choosing the file from your computer.
Click Install Now
Open Settings > PilotPress
Paste in the App ID and API Key from ONTRAPORT in PilotPress General Settings
Select to enable the Customer Center and the Partner Center if desired.
- The Customer Center provides a place for all members to change their password, see their ONTRAPORT invoices, update their credit cards, etc.
- The Partner Center provides reporting and promo tools for members of any Partner Program you have set up in ONTRAPORT.
- The "Which center has priority when redirecting" drop down: If the customer center and partner center are enabled, and the member logging in is both a Customer and a Partner, this dropdown designates which Center the member should be redirected to.
If enabled, by selecting the Customer Center or Partner Center above, set the Post Login Redirect Settings. These settings will redirect the person to the page you specify in the drop down menu. The page can be the auto-generated Customer or Partner Center, or any page you have created on your WordPress site. You can also include any ONTRApage you have hosted on your WordPress site using the ONTRApages Plugin.
Remember to click Save Changes at the bottom of Settings > PilotPress page.

Protect Your WordPress Content Using Membership Levels

You can protect WordPress pages, posts or entire post categories using PilotPress. Below are instructions for protecting a page or post. If you want to learn about protecting WordPress categories, see this article for details. For advanced users, you can also use shortcodes to display or hide content to a specific membership level on a public page.

Log into your integrated WordPress site as the administrator
Edit or add an existing page or post
Set the membership level in the PilotPress Options section by checking off the Access Levels
1. Leaving all the check boxes blank allows access for anyone visiting your website
2. Checking one or more check boxes will restrict access to logged in members with any one of those access levels (members will not have to have all the membership levels).
3. To have the page or post displayed in the navigation menu for non-members, select the Show in Navigation check box. This does not override your menu structure set by your theme or in Appearance > Menus. It only allows the page to be listed in navigation if it normally would be displayed. Otherwise, the protected page will not appear in the menu unless the person is logged in and has that access level.
4. The On Error page is used when a non-member tries to access the page. You can use this setting in combination with the Show in Navigation checkbox to tease your important content. Set the On Error page to a sales page for the content the person tried to access.
Click the Publish button to save the settings.

Create a Campaign to Give Members Access to Your Membership Site

The Campaign building instructions below create a Campaign that allow your members to receive a new password. The username for logging into your membership site will be their email address. If you have more than one membership level, copy this Campaign for each membership level and change the Give WP Membership Access element to the appropriate level.

In your ONTRAPORT account, navigate to Campaigns. Click + New Campaign.
Below the Added to Campaign element, add a Give WP Membership Access advanced element.
In the settings panel, select the website to give access to. If you have multiple websites connected, be sure you select the right one! Then, select the membership level.
Click Done in the Settings panel.
Below the Give WP Membership Access element, add a Send an Email action element.
Create a new ONTRAmail email message.
- Use the merge field dropdown menu to insert the merge fields for Username and Password for your integrated Wordpress site
- Hyperlink the URL where members can login
- Click Settings and enter subject line, send from, reply to details and copy from HTML
- Save the email
Save and Publish the Campaign.
Test the Campaign. From the Contacts collection, click the + New Contact button.
Enter a first name and email address. Be sure to use an email address that is NOT associated with your WordPress admin login.
Locate the Sequences and Tags section. Add the contact to the Campaign you created which gives access to the WordPress site and membership level.
Ensure that the following items happen:
- Email: Links are clickable, username and password merge fields populate
- Contact record > Memberships tab: New website subscriber created and correct membership level assigned

Note: You can drip out content to your members by adding a few extra elements to the process outlined above. On the same Campaign map you use to add members to your WordPress site, add additional "Give access to WordPress Membership Level" advanced elements to add additional membership levels.

The Campaign can have Waits inserted at desired intervals to drip the content. You may then add Email elements after each "Give access to WP Membership" element in the Campaign to notify your subscribers that new content has been released.

Check out our article here for more information on how to set this up!

Import Your Members into ONTRAPORT

Export your existing members along with their membership levels from your other membership system. You will need to create a separate list for each membership level; you may be able to do this while exporting the file, or may have to copy and edit the file after export.
Login to ONTRAPORT
Go to Contacts > Settings > Import Contacts
Be certain your file is a .CSV file. We do not import XLS or other formats.
Import Step 1 of 5: Drag your CSV file into the grey box or click Browse Computer to upload the file
Import Step 2 of 5: Check the Don't include header row (Will not be imported) box if the first line of your CSV file includes the field names such as First Name, Last Name, etc. Then click Next: Import Settings. Look at the display to verify that the file will import correctly. You should see the individual fields in columns, with at least three lines of records displayed. If all the content is on one line and in one field you must stop and re-configure your import file into the right format.
Import Step 3 of 5 has three distinct sections, the Duplicate Contact Manager, the Merge Settings, and the Usage Agreement.
1. In the Duplicate Contact Manager section select your merge preference. This setting determines what happens if an existing Contact Record is found during import.
  - Merge and underwrite with new imported data (default). This is the recommended setting for this import. This setting does not change any data already found in the existing record, but will add any new data. For example, if the existing Contact Record does not have the phone number, but the record you are importing does, ONTRAPORT will add the phone number to the existing record. This is almost always the setting you will use when importing contacts, especially if you are importing "lists" from other email service providers such as MailChimp or AWeber.
  - Merge and overwrite with new imported data. This setting will update fields with the data in the import when a matching Contact Record is found, even if data is already in that field. If the existing Contact Record has a phone number in it, and the imported record has a different phone number, the import will overwrite the existing data and the newly imported phone number will be written to the Contact Record. You cannot reverse this action easily, so use with caution. An example use of this feature is a mass update of an area code in a phone number. You can export contacts with the old phone number, use Excel to update the area code portion of the phone number in the CSV file, and then import the file using merge and overwrite.
  - Create New Entry. This setting will always create a new entry for each record in the import file. This can lead to duplicate Contact Records; ONTRAPORT allows you to override the built in protections against creating duplicate Contact Records by importing Contacts with this setting. Use this setting with caution, as deleting and merging duplicate records is a manual process.
    
    Importing Tags is the one exception to the above settings. In all cases imported Tags are added to the Tags the Contact has, even if the contact already has other Tags.
2. Merge Settings: Select which field to use to merge contacts with if a match is found in your database. The E-Mail field is selected by default, and is the recommended setting
3. Checking the box next to Import these Contacts with bulk mail set to 'Opt-Out' is very rarely used. This will prevent you from sending the contacts bulk email, and can only be reversed by the contact opting in again. An example of the proper use of this check box is if you are importing a list of contacts who have opted out and you want to market to them using Postcards or Facebook Custom Audiences to encourage them to opt back in. This can also be used to upload a "suppression list" or a list of contacts that have previously opted out.
4. Usage Agreement: Read and confirm you understand the four items listed in the Usage Agreement by checking the check boxes. If you have a question about any of these requirements, please reach out to our Postmaster team at postmaster@ontraport.com. When finished, click the Next: Match Fields button at the top right.
Import Step 4 of 5: Select the Fields To Be Imported. The fields in your import CSV are listed on the left. On the right, use the drop down boxes to select the ONTRAPORT Contact Record field you want to import the data into.
- To skip importing a field, click Select None.
- You can create a new field in the Contact Record if there is not already a match by clicking Create new field.
- If you have several files to upload from the same source check off the Remember My Selections check box for faster processing next time.
When finished, click the Next: Add Rules button at the top right.
Import Step 5 of 5: Add Rules To Your Imported Contacts. This step allows you to take actions on your new contacts as you import them. In this step, you'll add your Contacts to the Campaign you created earlier that gives access to the appropriate membership level and sends an email with their new username and password.
1. Click the + Add button.
2. Name the Rule for your reference. For example, "Add to Campaign" and the name of your Campaign.
3. Click the + Add Action button and select Add/Remove Contact from Campaign from the dropdown menu.
4. Select your Campaign
Click Next and your import will start.
Archive a copy of your CSV import file on your computer. The uploaded file will be visible in the import section for up to 60 days, and is then deleted.
Repeat steps 3-11 for each membership level list.

FAQs

Q. How can I test the new membership integration?

A. Wordpress Administrators are "cookied" by WordPress. WordPress will read the Administrator's cookie even while logging in as another user. Private and incognito modes in your browser will not prevent WordPress from reading the Administrator cookie. Because of this, the page protection may appear to fail. To test the page protection and other membership functions we recommend the following process:

Create a new Contact for testing purposes. Add a Membership level to the contact. Keep ONTRAPORT open to this contact record.
Open a new private tab or window in your browser (see instructions for Firefox and Chrome).
In the private tab or window, clear the cookies for your Wordpress site. This step is required. To see instructions on how to clear your cookies, click HERE.
Go to the default WordPress login page by adding "/wp-login.php" to your domain: http://your-domain.com/wp-login.php
Log in as your new contact and verify the membership functions.
To test a new membership level, log the contact out of Wordpress. Add the new membership level in ONTRAPORT and log the contact back into Wordpress.

Q. Can Pilotpress work with a WP Network / Multisite installation?

A. Pilotpress will not work in a WordPress Network or Multisite configuration.

Q. I have another membership plugin. Can I export the members to PilotPress and have them keep their same password?

A. No, this is not possible. By default, passwords are hashed and salted before they are stored in the WordPress database. It is not possible for ONTRAPORT to read those passwords, unencrypt them, and apply them to the user after PilotPress is installed.

Rochelle Yoshida

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