Athena Membership

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Athena Membership gives your WordPress site a full membership system with no custom development required. Install the plugin, create two pages, and you have working user registration and a protected member area ready to go.

What You Get Out of the Box

  • Signup form — a React-powered registration block (athena-membership/signup) that collects first name, last name, email, and password. Drop it on any page and you have a working registration flow.
  • Email verification — every new account triggers a verification email. Unverified users cannot log in until they click the link. Verification URLs use a clean rewrite (/athena_verify/{key}/) with timing-safe key comparison.
  • Protected member area — a React SPA that mounts automatically on your chosen page. Guests are redirected to the WordPress login screen and returned here after sign-in.
  • Dashboard and Account views — built-in routes included from first install.
  • Admin access control — membership role users are blocked from /wp-admin/ and the admin bar is suppressed on the frontend automatically.
  • Menu utilities — two CSS classes (athena_hide_loggedin and athena_member_area) let you show or hide nav items based on login state, and automatically replace a menu item label with the logged-in user’s display name.
  • Configurable membership roles — create as many roles as you need (e.g. Member, Premium) and choose which one new signups receive by default.

Built for Developers

Every major touchpoint in the signup and member area is exposed as a JavaScript filter hook via @wordpress/hooks, so you can extend the plugin without touching its source files.

Signup Hooks

  • athena_membership.signup_steps — add, remove, or reorder the steps in the signup form. Each step has its own component, label, and optional validation callback. A step indicator is rendered automatically when more than one step is present.
  • athena_membership.signup_main_step — replace the entire default fields block (first name, last name, email, password) with your own JSX.
  • athena_membership.signup_main_step_extra — inject extra content below the default fields without replacing them — ideal for a terms checkbox or marketing opt-in.

Member Area Hooks

  • athena_membership.app_routes — register new routes in the member area SPA. Each route maps a URL slug to a React component. The first route in the array is the fallback landing page.
  • athena_membership.app_nav_items — add sidebar navigation links to match your routes. The Logout link is always appended last and cannot be removed.

Routes use the History API backed by a WordPress rewrite rule, so each member area sub-page has a real, shareable URL — no hash routing.

Setup in Five Steps

  1. Upload and activate the plugin.
  2. Go to Athena Membership → Membership Roles and add at least one role.
  3. Create a Signup page and add the athena-membership/signup block.
  4. Create a Member Area page — leave the body empty, the plugin handles the rest.
  5. Under Athena Membership → General, set the Member Area Page to the page you just created and save.

That is the complete setup. No shortcodes, no template files to copy, no manual rewrite flushing — activation handles it automatically.