Overriding Default MemberPress Email Template

MemberPress sends automatic emails to members during important events like signing up, renewing subscriptions, and processing payments. The default email designs might not match your website's style and must be customized.

This document explains how to customize these emails to represent your brand better while keeping all the essential information. This guide shows the simple steps to modify the MemberPress email templates to create personalized messages for your members.

What Are MemberPress Email Templates?

Email templates control how your automatic MemberPress emails look and what they say. These templates use HTML (the code that creates web pages) and unique MemberPress tags that automatically add member-specific information like names and membership details.

Note: The original email templates are stored in the MemberPress plugin files and should not be changed directly. Any changes made directly to these files will be erased when you update the MemberPress plugin.

The original templates are stored in the MemberPress plugin files and should not be changed directly because updates will erase your changes.

Editing Only Email Template Fonts

To add font styling options to your email editor, you can add the Advanced Editor Tools plugin to your website. This is the simplest solution if you only need to update the font styles used for your emails.

Once activated,

Customizing MemberPress Email Templates Via 3rd-Party Plugin

The easiest option to customize the entire MemberPress email template design is to use a 3rd-party plugin called Email Templates.

This plugin stores your custom email template design and can override the default email templates. Therefore, you can apply your custom design to any MemberPress email type by deactivating the default template for it.

Note: To use custom email templates created with Email Templates, the plugin needs to be active on your website.

To create a custom template design using the Email Templates plugin, follow these steps:

1. Install and activate the Email Templates plugin on your website.
2. Next, navigate to Dashboard > Appearance > Email Templates.
3. Design your custom template as needed, including the email header, body, footer, and background.
4. Click the Publish button to save your design.

Once your custom template design is saved, you can apply it to any MemberPress email type:

1. Navigate to Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings > Emails tab.
2. Find the MemberPress email type to which you wish to apply your custom template design and click the Edit button.
3. Uncheck the Use default template option to apply a custom design to this email type.

Tip: As an alternative to the Email Templates plugin, you can use the Email Template Designer plugin. This plugin also works well with MemberPress.

Manualy Customizing MemberPress Email Templates

Alternatively, you can also customize MemberPress email templates manually. In this case, to customize your email templates, you need:

• MemberPress installed and activated on your WordPress site;
• Access to your website files through an FTP client (e.g. Filezilla) or a file manager. You can either use the file manager provided by your hosting or a file manager plugin (e.g. File Manager);
• An active child theme.

MemberPress Default Email Templates

First, you should locate the MemberPress email template files:

1. Access your website files either by connecting to your website using an FTP client or via file manager.
2. Navigate to the wp-content/plugins/memberpress/app/views/emails folder.
3. Look through the files to find the email templates you need. Some of the most common templates include:
   • member_signup_completed.php – sent when a member completes registration;
   • credit_card_expiring.php – sent when a member's credit card is about to expire;
   • subscription_renewed.php – sent when a subscription renews;
   • transaction_completed.php – sent when a payment is completed;
   • transaction_refunded.php – sent when a payment is refunded.

Creating Your Custom Email Templates

After locating the original email templates, you should create a folder to store your custom templates. This folder should be created in your child theme folder. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your child theme folder (usually in wp-content/themes/your-child-theme-name).
2. Create a new folder named memberpress.
3. Inside that folder, create another folder named emails. Thus, your final path should be: wp-content/themes/your-child-theme-name/memberpress/emails/
4. Next, navigate back to the original email templates folder (wp-content/plugins/memberpress/app/views/emails/). Here, find the file of the email template you want to customize and make a copy of this file.
5. Move the copied file to your custom templates folder (wp-content/themes/your-child-theme-name/memberpress/emails/). Keep the exact same filename.

Once the copied email template file is added to the custom email templates folder, you can start customizing the template:

1. Open the file using any text editor.
2. Apply your modifications to the design and text.

Note: Ensure no changes are made to any MemberPress Template Tags (e.g. {$first_name}) present in the code. These tags insert member-related information into your emails. If modified, these tags will stop working.

3. Save the file changes without changing the name of the file.

Understanding MemberPress Template Tags

MemberPress uses unique tags to insert member information into emails. Here are the most useful ones:

• {$first_name} – Shows the member's first name
• {$last_name} – Shows the member's last name
• {$username} – Shows the member's username
• {$user_email} – Shows the member's email address
• {$blog_name} – Shows your WordPress site name
• {$membership_name} – Shows the name of the purchased membership
• {$transaction_total} – Shows the payment amount
• {$login_page} – Creates a link to your login page

Keep these tags in your email templates so that each member receives personalized information.

Simple Email Template Customizations

When editing your custom template files, these are some of the most common changes you can apply:

1. Change the email subject line:
   • Look for text that starts with $subject = near the top of the file;
   • Change the text between the single quotes.
   • Keep any text within curly braces like {$blog_name} as these to automatically insert your site name.

// MemberPress Email Template: Member Signup Email Subject // Change the text between the quotes to customize your subject line $subject = 'Welcome to {$blog_name}!';

2. Change the email message:
   • The text starting with $message = contains HTML code that creates the email design. Find this section in the template code;
   • You can change the text parts while keeping the HTML tags and template tags;
   • Template tags look like {$first_name} or {$membership_name} and should not be removed.

// MemberPress Email Template: Member Signup Email Content // Edit the text between <p> and </p> tags to change the message $message = ' <html> <body> <div> <h1>Welcome to {$blog_name}!</h1> <p>Hello {$first_name},</p> <p>Thank you for joining our {$membership_name} membership!</p> <p>Your account is now ready to use.</p> <p>You can log in to your account here:</p> <p><a href="{$login_page}">Access Your Account</a></p> <p>Thank you,<br>The {$blog_name} Team</p> </div> </body> </html>';

3. Add your logo:
   • Find the section at the beginning of the email body;
   • Add an image tag with the complete URL to your logo;
   • Make sure the URL starts with “https://” and points to your image file.

// MemberPress Email Template: Adding a Logo // Insert this code at the beginning of your email body <div style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <img src="https://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/your-logo.png" alt="Your Site Name" width="200" /> </div>

Testing Your Custom Email Templates

After making changes, test your custom emails to make sure they look right:

1. Go to Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings.
2. Click the Emails tab.
3. Find the email type you customized.
4. Click the Send Test button.
5. Check your email inbox to see how the email looks.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

If your custom email templates aren't working:

1. Check that your folder structure is exactly your-child-theme/memberpress/emails/.
2. Make sure your file names match the original files exactly.
3. Verify that you didn't accidentally delete any template tags (text in curly braces like {$first_name}).
4. Clear any caching plugins you have installed.
5. Try deactivating other plugins temporarily to check for conflicts.

Creating a Simple Plugin for Email Templates (Alternative Method)

If you prefer not to modify your theme, you can create a simple plugin instead:

1. Create a new folder named my-memberpress-emails in the wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Inside this folder, create a file named my-memberpress-emails.php.
3. Copy and paste this code into the file:

<?php /** * MemberPress Email Template: Custom Email Templates Plugin * Plugin Name: My MemberPress Email Templates * Description: Custom email templates for MemberPress * Version: 1.0 * Author: Your Name */ function custom_memberpress_email_paths($paths) { // Add your custom template directory $paths[] = plugin_dir_path(__FILE__) . 'templates/'; return $paths; } add_filter('mepr_view_paths', 'custom_memberpress_email_paths');

4. Create a folder named templates inside your new plugin folder.
5. Create a folder named emails inside the templates folder.
6. Copy and customize the email templates as described earlier, placing them in the templates/emails/ folder.
7. Go to Dashboard > Plugins and activate your new plugin.

Summary

Customizing MemberPress email templates allows you to create professional, branded emails that match your site's design.

In addition, you can edit the content of your MemberPress emails and add email parameters to customize emails further.