WP Customer Area

The base plugin

WP Customer Area is a plugin made to fulfill an increasing demand from small and medium-sized companies who are using WordPress for their website : to get a simple, yet powerful, way to publish documents, images, files to their customers in a private and confidential fashion.

Requirements

PHP 5.6+ (7.0+ recommended)
WordPress 4.7+ (latest recommended)
WP Customer Area (latest version)

More information

The basics

Update procedure

Securing your private files

Getting started

User guides

Invoicing

Resolving Bootstrap conflicts

Shortcodes

Permissions reference

Translating the plugin

Developer guides

Theme development

The skin system

The template system

Front-office pages

Tools for Developers

Pre-sales

Can I use WP Customer Area in a multisite mode?

Yes, our plugin works on WordPress multisite installations.

What is the minimum version of WordPress required to run WP Customer Area?

WP Customer Area requires at least version WordPress 3.6 and we make sure to be compatible with each new version.

Usage

Can I hide WordPress menu items from guest/registered users?

Yes, since version 6.2, you can tag your menu items with CSS classes which will be analysed by the plugin.

If you want to hide a menu item from guest users, simply add it the class wpca-logged-only.
If you want to hide a menu item from logged-in users, simply add it the class wpca-guest-only.

To know how to add a CSS class to a menu item in WordPress, please refer to the wordpress.com documentation on that topic.

How do I automatically assign private content to all new users?

You must install the WP Customer Area add-on: "Additional owner types" and assign your content to each and every WordPress role. This way, all users of your site will be able to view this private content.

What is the difference between the WordPress pages marked as private and private pages in WP Customer Area?

The pages marked as private in WordPress offer very limited functionality. WP Customer Area has a very extensive set of permissions to control who does what in a very precise way.

You can use both depending on your needs (and those of your client).

Note that it is possible to disable the private pages of WP Customer Area from the settings.

Technical questions

Why aren’t any styles applied to my private area?

Make sure that your theme's templates (page.php, single.php, etc.) use the function the_content(), and not echo get_the_content(). WP Customer Area relies on themes calling that function to print the page content.
Styles can also not show up if your theme header.php file does not include <body <?php body_class(); ?>>.
Browse a generated WPCA page code : if you don't see the classes customer-area and customer-area-active added on the body tag, it can mean that your theme or a plugin is using the body_class filter incorrectly and override previously added classes. You should in this case find this function and report the error to the developper of the plugin/theme.

Sub-menus are not showing up

WP Customer Area is using Bootstrap as a framework. Unfortunaly, a lot of themes or plugins can also use Bootstrap, and this could conflict by the one loaded by WP Customer Area. If your sub-menus are not displaying correctly, you probably have a conflict. In this case, please check our documentation about resolving bootstrap conflicts.

After updating the main plugin, something is not working anymore

WP Customer Area is a complex plugin. When updating it, you must follow our update procedure in order to avoid any problems. Usually you have made the following mistakes:

You did not deactivate and then activate the plugin again. Which could lead to several messages displayed on your admin pages
You updated the main plugin but you did not update the add-ons. Which often leads at best to something not working properly, at worst, a PHP error message or a white screen

How to allow registration from my login form?

Users can register from the login page if you configure your site to allow it. This is a native WordPress feature but it is disabled by default. To allow registration on your site, go to Settings > General and check "Anyone can register".

To prevent registration from spam robots, we recommend installing a captcha plugin. Luckily, most of these are compatible with WP Customer Area. We recommend for instance "Really simple captcha".

My private files are accessible when a person is aware of its direct URL. How to block this?

To block direct access to private files, see the documentation about how to secure the private files in WP Customer Area.

I am having problems with my WordPress theme. How can I fix this?

WP Customer Area should work with most WordPress themes available on the market: free ones as for example Twenty Twelve (100% compatible) or comercial ones. We invite you to install our plugin available for free on your WordPress installation for preliminary tests before the purchase of add-ons.

However, due to the growing use of Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework - which is built into our plugin, some compatibility issues may arise. You will probably have to make adjustments in your WordPress theme.

We recommend you purchase premium themes certified 100% compatible with WP Customer Area from our shop.

A small company client area

Relationship with customer is very important to any company. An area where clients can download their invoices or private documents is a convenient way to encourage them to regularly visit your website and build the trust they have in the company.

A school exchange platform

WP Customer Area and a few add-ons can be used to easily build a very useful platform for teachers, students and staff members to exchange documents and private messages.