The extension allows you to drip whole posts or content embedded in posts. In this section, we review how you can drip whole posts. To learn how you can enclose content embedded within a post, see the [groups_drip] shortcode which is explained in the Shortcodes section.
The concept of dripping content in the context of particular posts is fairly simple to understand. To drip a post to your visitors means that they will only be able to view it when certain time constraints are fulfilled. For example, you might want to restrict new accounts from viewing a particular post only after they have held their account for 2 weeks.
When you create or edit a post, you will find a new Drip box with several options. Here we refer to “posts” in general, although these settings apply to any post type for which content dripping is enabled, including of course pages and any other custom post types.
The Drip settings for a post, here disabled.
If you don’t see the box, make sure that you have dripping enabled for the post type as explained under Setup.
The Drip options include:
- Disabled
- Account Creation
- Group Membership
- Specified Time
Let’s look at what these options are used for …
Disabled
When this is selected, no particular restrictions to access the post related to dripping are imposed.
Account Creation
This option allows you to drip the post relative to when the user’s account was created. If you select this option, the visitor must have an account and be logged in, otherwise the post will appear to be hidden.
Dripping the post based on when the user´s account was created.
If you just select this option and leave both From and Until empty, visitors will be able to view the post as long as they are logged in.
The From part allows you to determine after what amount of time the user will be able to view the post, based on when his account was created. You can input a whole number, including 0. Along with the number, you can select the time unit that is used to evaluate when the users can view the post. The default used is Days and available options include Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months and Years.
The time at which a post is made available is calculated from the exact time the account was created, including the exact hour, minute and seconds. If you wish to make a post available to the user at the start of the time unit, you can check the option From unit start. For example, you might want to allow new accounts to view a post 3 days after their account was created, starting midnight of the 3rd day – you would enable the From unit start option for this case. With it disabled, if a user’s account was created at 12:15:45, the user would have access exactly at 12:15:45 on the 3rd day after registering the account.
The Until part allows you to limit the time until which the post can be viewed. The Until unit end option will allow the user to access the post until the end of the time unit used, e.g. if you would allow a user to view the post until 10 days after registering the account, if you have Until unit end enabled, the user would be able to view the post until 23:59:59 of the 10th day after registering the account.
You can use any combination of the From and Until parts, even using different units of time on each. You can use only the From part, only the Until part or both. And as mentioned initially, you can even use none of them, limiting viewing of the post to those who are logged in.
Group Membership
This option is using the same set of options as the Account Creation option, but the point of time taken to evaluate whether the user can view the post is the first start of the group membership instead. The extension must have been enabled when the user’s membership first started, otherwise the moment of account creation would apply instead.
In this example, the visibility of the post is restricted based on the group membership and the drip condition.
The From and Until parts will be based on the groups that restrict access to the post. If no groups restrict access to the post, the user’s account creation time is used for evaluation instead.
For the From part, if there are several groups that the user is a member of, the earliest membership is used to determine whether the user can view the post.
For the Until part, the latest group membership is taken as a reference to evaluate whether the user can still view the post.
Specified Time
This option does not require the visitor to have an account or be logged in. It applies to anyone trying to view the post as long as at least one of the From or Until settings is configured.
This presents an example where the visibility of the post is restricted to a certain time.
The From part determines the fixed point of time as of which the post is visible. If you want to use it, you must at least set the date. If you omit the time, the post is visible as of the start of that day (i.e. at 00:00:00).
The Until part determines the date until which the post is visible. If you want to use this option, you must at least set the date. The time is optional and the post will be visible until the end of that day (i.e. until 23:59:59).
You can use the From or Until part or both. The current date and time at the server is displayed at the bottom. This is the reference that is used to determine the specified times (note that this might be different than your actual local time).