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An exclusive Members Area which is NOT for public sale

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Apologies if this has already been answered but I couldn't seem to find what I was looking for in which someone has done what I'm trying to achieve.

I would like to build a members area for a client in which nobody can 'sign up' or buy this course online, however it's not a free area. My client sells corporate coaching and as part of that coaching, we currently have Thinkific setup which takes them through 7 modules of learning. We'd like to move away from Thinkific and place the content directly into his new 7.1 SQSP site that we're building.

So in my mind, there will not be anyway for someone to 'buy' this product from his new site, but when he sells a coaching program, we need to be able to add that person to the members area with their unique username/password so they can access the content.

I'm just not sure of the best practice on how to set this up as it sounds like I want to set this up as a 'Free' account (SQSP definition: Visitors can access a member area’s gated content free of charge after establishing a customer account.) because I want them to have a customer account.

However I don't want just anyone to be able to access this so unless I can completely hide the sign up page maybe I need a 'Fixed Amount' which I set to a ridiculous amount that nobody would pay. And then just manually add people as we sell coaching programs.

Thoughts?

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7 hours ago, beren said:

I would like to build a members area for a client in which nobody can 'sign up' or buy this course online

Unfortunately Squarespace have not prioritised this functionality and so it doesn’t currently exist. Please see my post here:

 

Me: I'm Paul, a SQSP user for >18 yrs & Circle Leader since 2017. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
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Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to my own SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
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Would you like your customers to be able to mark their favourite products in your Squarespace store?

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Thank you @sayreambrosio and @paul2009 for your responses. In asking SQSP the same question I got this:

Quote

In this case you could technically allow customers to pay the site owner outside of Squarespace, then let them join the member area for free. 
 
The best way to do this would be to disable the 'join' option in your Access Denied Screen. We have a guide with more information about this here:
 
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050832671-Customizing-the-Member-Areas-experience#toc-customize-access-denied-screen 
 
What you can do next is just set up a regular page on your site with a Form Block, where potential members can submit their application to you. You would then set up a separate Signup page with a Member Signup Block, which is password protected.
 
We have two guide here, one on Form Blocks, another about page passwords:
 
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206566737-Form-Blocks 
 
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205814618-Page-passwords 
 
Whenever you get a successful applicant, you would just reply to them with a link to the Signup page, and the password to access that - then they can sign up. By setting up the site like this, it would not be possible for someone to join without your prior approval.

Which comes back to the security through obscurity you mentioned in the other post @paul2009

However, using this though process, and the knowledge you have both provided, here's an alternative (workaround) I'm thinking about, please let me know if you find any holes in this idea. I know it's not ideal, and would be good if SQSP would update, but may serve our purposes:

We will ONLY be giving access to my clients own coaching clients, just like we do with Thinkific at the moment. So we do not need anyone to fill in a form or anything and currently we add people to Thinkific and then send them their details. So what if we hide the members sign up page behind a password protect page we can use to sign up on behalf of our new members. Then we use send them an email with their login page URL, their username and password and clear instructions to reset their password once they log in?

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