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Lesson 1 of 7 · 9:24 · Beginner · Webflow

The whole build in 10 minutes

A fast run through everything this course covers: signup, plans, payments and gated content on one Webflow site.

Where this journey starts

Welcome to Memberstack University. Before you build anything piece by piece, watch the whole thing come together on one Webflow site in under 10 minutes.

By the end of this lesson you can

  • Create a Memberstack app and add the install code to Webflow
  • Paste in a signup form and get your first member
  • Send new members to a welcome page that shows their first name
  • Create a paid plan, gate a page and unlock it with a Stripe test checkout

Heads up: This is a preview. Plans, payments and gated content each get their own lessons in Journeys 2 and 3, so don’t worry if some steps go by fast.

Lesson notes

How it works

What a Memberstack app is and how it connects to Webflow

A Memberstack app is the container for everything your membership site runs on: your members, plans, settings and integrations. Every new app starts in Test Mode, a free sandbox where you can register up to 50 test members without a credit card.

Your Webflow site talks to the app through one install script. You paste it into the Head code of your Webflow site settings and publish. From then on, Memberstack loads on every page, looks for data-ms-* attributes on your elements and makes them work. That is why a pasted form can create working member accounts with no code of your own.

How a signup form creates a member

A signup form is a normal Webflow form with attributes on it: data-ms-form="signup" on the form, data-ms-member="email" on the email input and data-ms-member="password" on the password input. Components you copy from the Memberstack dashboard already have them. When someone submits, Memberstack creates the account and the new member appears on the Members page.

If you haven't set a signup redirect yet, the member stays on the same page, because Memberstack doesn't know where to send them.

How to show a member's name on a page

Custom fields are columns in your member database. You add them from the Custom Fields button on the Members page, and each one gets a field ID such as first-name. Put data-ms-member="first-name" on a text element and Memberstack fills it with the logged-in member's value.

To land new members on that welcome page, set the On Signup redirect under Plans, Default Settings.

How plans, gated pages and Stripe checkout fit together

A plan decides what a member can access and what they pay. Default Settings act as the fallback for members with no plan. A paid plan gets a price, and a button carrying that Price ID sends the member to Stripe Checkout.

Gated Content does the locking. You name a group, choose which plans get access, list Restricted URLs with Starts with (a whole folder) or Equal to (one page), and set an Access Denied URL. When a visitor without access opens one of those URLs, Memberstack sends them to the Access Denied URL instead. Once their checkout succeeds, the plan is on their account, they land on the plan's signup redirect, and the gated page now opens for them.

In Test Mode, pay with Stripe's test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry date and any CVC. Nothing is charged.

Before you move on

0 of 5

Tick these off on your own site. Done with all of them? You’re ready for the next lesson.

Up next: Next, you’ll slow down and do the first step properly: installing Memberstack on your Webflow site.

Chapters

Common questions

Do I need a paid Webflow plan to use Memberstack?

Your site must allow custom code. That means a paid Webflow Site plan (Basic or Premium) or a paid Workspace plan, which unlocks custom code on free Starter sites in that workspace.

Does Memberstack charge real money while I'm testing?

No. New apps start in Test Mode, which is free and allows up to 50 test members. Paid plans run through Stripe test mode, so you use the test card 4242 4242 4242 4242.

Is Memberstack gated content fully secure?

It is front-end access control. If the Memberstack script fails to load and someone knows the exact URL, they can reach the page. For sensitive material, Memberstack offers Hosted Content.

Keep going

Checked against the Memberstack docs

TranscriptAuto-generated captions
  1. 0:00

    Welcome to Memberstack in this video we’re going to build a fully functional membership site with free and paid accounts in about 10 minutes I’ll walk you through step by step so if you’d like to follow along you’re going to need a new Webflow project and ideally something you want to gate access to here I have a review mockup generator that I created I want to charge people who want to access this mockup generator so yeah first thing we need to create our app in Memberstack so I’m going to call this review generator select web

  2. 0:33

    flow and because I already have a project I’m going to just start without a template and create my application first thing we need to do is grab this install code and add it in the custom code section in Webflow so I’ll go to my project go to site settings custom code and paste it right here at the top of the header section save it publish it once this is published Memberstack is installed if you’re unable to add the code here send

  3. 1:04

    an email to welcom Memberstack.com and we’ll add the code for you all right once that’s done we’ll go back over here and we’ll test to make sure that the code is working so yes we’re good to go there now we can add a signup form what’s great here is that Webflow gives us total design control we can start from any of these projects which I’ll start from this one and once I copy and paste it into Webflow I’ll be able to change the

  4. 1:35

    design this form that I’m adding now has social login email and password but we also have password list sign up and other social off providers if you want to use those all right so to add this I’m going to select the element that I want to place this in and then command V and Bam now I have a fully functional signup form on my website I’m going to publish these changes now that’s test it to make sure everything’s

  5. 2:05

    working properly we’ll enter a name email and a password and sign up okay so I can tell you everything is working we haven’t set up any redirects yet so Memberstack didn’t actually know where to send the user we’re going to set that up in a future step but first back here in Memberstack we have our first member so let’s take a moment to celebrate this is a huge milestone we now have functional user logins and signups on our site and we just need to

  6. 2:36

    build up from this Foundation the next thing is we’re going to add a redirect but you know before we do that I want to point out you find you need help or you have questions you have a lot of options you can ask our AI helpbot which is trained on Memberstack can write code and do all kinds of crazy stuff we have our help center we have a community and you can message support directly we also have a slack group with thousands of people plus the Memberstack team everybody standing by to help you with your project with that said let’s

  7. 3:07

    continue on with our tutorial we’re going to add a redirect so that the next person who signs up is going to land on a welcome page and when they log in we’ll take them to let’s say an upgrade page cool so this is anytime somebody signs up without any paid plans basically our free members and then we’ll go over to Webflow and create our welcome page okay here we go welcome and let’s add some content we’ll

  8. 3:41

    say welcome friend and let’s customize this so if we know the person’s first name it will be displayed here so I’m going to type data Ms member equals first name just like that add publish if you’re wondering how where did I get that attribute of data Ms member first name let me show you here on the members page if I go to custom Fields you can see I already have a custom field of

  9. 4:12

    data Ms member first name and that corresponds with this column right here I can add other ones as well so later I’ll want to collect the title so now we have a title column and I can use the attribute data Ms member equals title tile to display that in my UI okay let’s go test our site again let’s see if our redirect is working we’ll say Duncan 2 we’ll use my email and pick a new

  10. 4:45

    password sign up and there we go as you can see we were redirected to the welcome page and the UI is personalized to me if we go back into Memberstack we’ll see that we have this new member here at the top so now what if we want to charge access and then gate access to the mockup generator on our site here’s how we do it we’re going to create some plans but first let’s go find a UI I find in general it’s better to create the UI that you

  11. 5:18

    want and then to find the Memberstack features that are going to serve it so I’ve got this homepage here we’ll put our pricing table there by going to components pricing and then pick from any of these UI I could build my own from scratch but it’s gosh it’s just so much easier to start from one of these so same thing click and paste there we go now uh anybody who’s going to join for free I’m going to just send them to

  12. 5:51

    the signup page and then anybody who is going to sign up for a paid account same thing send them to the signup page we need to create our plans next our plans in Memberstack so we’ll go to the plans page and I’m going to treat my default settings as my free plan so that anybody who joins without paying gets taken to the welcome page and if they log in they get asked to upgrade doesn’t make a ton of sense but uh you get the idea next we’ll create a paid Plan called All

  13. 6:26

    Access I think that’s what yes all access access create and then we’ll create a price in this case we’ll say um all access monthly this is going to be $4.99 per month so wow I’m really proud of my review generator okay cool the next step is install and publish I recommend pausing and watching

  14. 6:58

    this video might be different depending on what kind of plan you created but but watch this video because it’s going to walk you through exactly how to set everything up for your particular site for me I know I need this one so I’m going to get this and replace that and then same thing here get the ID pop it in right there and publish while that’s publishing let’s gate access to our mockup generator we’ll see mockup

  15. 7:30

    Grant access to members on a specific plan all access great and then we’re going to restrict access to any page that starts with mockup I could also do equals to uh but we’ll do starts with so in the future if I have additional type of mockup generators I can use that and if they don’t have access we’ll send them to the upgrade page okay you know let’s go test it if we go to our site and we try to go to the mockup page you can see

  16. 8:03

    we are immediately taken to the upgrade page instead if I want to get access I can go to the homepage and I’m already signed in so it’s going to give me this test card and in in production in once this is really live it would immediately launch the checkout I’m going to enter some fake card information the zip code and subscribe this is all in test mode so it’s not actually

  17. 8:34

    charging me and that’s why I used this test card number okay I’m in so now I’m on the welcome page let’s go ahead and try to access the mockup page now that we’re paying and there we go we just dated access to this page and then unlocked it through a Stripe checkout all of that in about 10 minutes thank you so much for watching this is just scratching the surface of what’s possible with Memberstack we

  18. 9:05

    have nearly a thousand components hundreds of custom scripts templates and a huge community of people who are building all kinds of incredible things we can’t wait to hear what questions you have for us and I wish you all the luck as you bring your project to life thanks for watching and hope you have a great rest of your day

This is v1 of Memberstack University, built from the tutorials we’ve put so much work into over the years. We’d like to make a more organized series.