Content gating settings
The rules that decide what a reader gets when they are not entitled to an article.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Gate all posts | Locks every post by default, instead of only the ones you mark. |
| Teaser paragraphs | How many paragraphs everyone can read before the lock appears. |
| Default requirement | The membership level a reader needs when a post does not say otherwise. Every member includes free Community members. Only paid members does not. |
| If FMS is unreachable | What signed-in members get when FMS does not answer. |
| Keep the last answer for | How many hours a member's last answer from FMS is kept for an outage. |
| Search-crawler bypass secret | Lets verified search engines index full articles. Locked articles also tell Google they are paywalled, so indexing the full text is not read as hiding it from readers. That note goes into the site's SEO plugin (Yoast, Rank Math or All in One SEO) when one is on, and is added by this plugin when none is. The locked text keeps its layout. |
| Trusted access keys | Lets a named partner through without an account. |
| Free reads per month | How many gated articles a signed-in reader without the level may read anyway. Only Every member and Only paid members articles count, never tier-locked ones. |
| Guest free reads per month | The same, for readers who are not signed in. |
The outage setting is the important one
Every few minutes the website asks FMS what each signed-in member may read. When FMS does not answer, this setting decides what happens. Visitors who are not signed in stay locked whatever you choose.
| Choice | During an FMS outage |
|---|---|
| Keep each member's last answer | Each signed-in member keeps what FMS last said about them, for the hours set below. The default, and what decision card 20 chose |
| Keep content locked | Every member is locked out until FMS answers again. While PMPro is active, articles with their own rule still ask PMPro |
| Fall back to Paid Memberships Pro | PMPro decides while it is active. Once PMPro is deactivated, it works like Keep each member's last answer |
Keep the last answer for takes 0 to 72 hours. The default is 24. 0 keeps nothing, so an outage locks every member out. The hours count from the moment FMS last answered for that member.
What members see
| Member | What they get during an outage |
|---|---|
| Signed in, FMS answered for them within the hours | What they had then. Nothing tells them FMS is down |
| Signed in, no answer within the hours | We can't check your membership right now. Please reload in a minute. No join buttons |
| Not signed in | The usual locked card |
Signing out drops the last answer
A member who signs out during an outage loses their copy. They stay locked after signing back in, until FMS answers again. So do members who change their email, buy, change plan or cancel during it.
What the last answer does not cover
- An answer from FMS always wins. A member whose membership ended is locked as soon as FMS says so.
- A membership that ends during an outage keeps reading until the copy runs out. The owner accepted this.
- "Not an FMS member", a missing API address or key, and an account conflict always lock.
- A rejected service key counts as an outage, so members keep their copies. The red notice on the settings page stays up. Fix the key before the copies run out.
- A copy taken before the API address, the key or the FMS copy changed is never used.
- Paying, the billing page, plan changes and the newsletter archive still need FMS. They fail until it answers.
- On hosting with a shared memory cache, the cache may drop a copy early. That member is locked, never let in.
Set in wp-config instead
define('FMS_MG_LAST_ANSWER_HOURS', 24); in wp-config.php sets the hours and greys out the field.
The readiness checks on this page include If FMS cannot be reached. It passes when an outage keeps members' last answers. It warns, without blocking, for Keep content locked or 0 hours.
Free reads are how people discover you
A small monthly allowance lets a stranger read one or two articles and then meet the paywall having seen the quality. Zero is a valid choice, just a different strategy.
Metering does not track people
The guest allowance is counted against a scrambled fingerprint of the connection, not a stored address, and a metered page is never cached, so one reader's count never leaks to another.