Membership-based access in phpWordPress 3.2 (2006) made the website, or specific sections of it, available only to registered members, while other sections stayed public. Today Ghost offers member sign-up and per-post access levels, and WordPress offers public, password protected and private posts in core.
phpWordPress 3.2, released on 8 May 2006, listed membership-based access as the second of its six headline features. The product was a commercial PHP article manager from Spoonlabs, renamed Vivvo later in 2006, and it was unrelated to the open-source WordPress project. See the What’s New overview and the changelog for the wider release.
What did membership-based access do?
The archived page says: “With Membership access, the website content (or specific sections of the site) will be available only to the registered members.” It adds that you can “easily control the section(s) you wish to have open to public opposite to private areas for registered members only.” A 3,322 KB QuickTime movie accompanied it, which was not archived as text.
The changelog gives the mechanism. On 2 May 2006 it records “Category based private/public access (for membership system)”. So access was set per category, not per article. The release announcement of 8 May described the same thing as control over which sections of the web site are open to the public or registered members only.
Where did the member accounts come from?
Registration already existed. The 3.11 changelog in January 2006 fixed user sign-up, including the status of unconfirmed accounts after an activation email, and added language strings for confirm password and the sign-up message. Version 3.2 added the access rule on top of that.
The archived pages say nothing about payments, subscription periods or tiers. Calling this a paywall would go beyond the evidence. It is a way to keep some categories for logged-in users.
How do Ghost and WordPress handle this now?
Ghost treats membership as a core part of the product. Its documentation says member sign up and sign in is available to all visitors by default, and lists subscription access options: “Anyone can sign up”, “Paid-members only”, “Only people I invite” and “Nobody”. Each post then has a “Post access” setting: Public, Members only, Paid-members only or specific tiers. Access is set per post, where phpWordPress set it per category.
WordPress core is narrower. Its documentation lists three visibility states for a post or page: Public, Password Protected and Private. It says that hiding the entire blog, or restricting it to certain users, is not part of core and points to plugins. A members area with accounts therefore usually means choosing and maintaining a plugin.
These are statements from vendor documentation. We have not tested either system for this page. The Ghost profile and WordPress profile cover each product.
What should a publisher check?
Decide first whether you want accounts, passwords or payments. Then check three things: the unit of access (site, category, post or tier), what a logged-out reader sees at a locked URL, and whether search engines can index the locked content. The last point matters for revenue and for discoverability, and it is rarely answered in a feature list.
The earlier feature was tabbed article management, and the next is in-place editing.
Questions people ask
How did phpWordPress membership access work?
The archived page says the whole site or specific sections could be limited to registered members, with other sections left public. The changelog describes the control as category-based private or public access, added on 2 May 2006.
Was phpWordPress membership a paywall?
The archived pages mention registered members but not payments, tiers or subscriptions. We cannot say whether it was used for paid access. It is described only as a way to separate public sections from private ones.
How do Ghost and WordPress handle member-only content?
According to their documentation, Ghost has member sign-up and per-post access levels including paid tiers. WordPress core offers public, password protected and private visibility per post, and needs plugins to restrict a whole site.
Sources
- The archived 3.2 feature page says that with Membership access the website content, or specific sections, is available only to registered members, and that you can control which sections are open to the public as opposed to private areas for registered members only. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The archived feature page offered a 3,322 KB QuickTime movie. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The 3.2 changelog records 'Category based private/public access (for membership system)' on 02.05.2006. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The 8 May 2006 announcement described membership-based access as giving control over which sections of the web site are open to the public or registered members only. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The 3.11 changelog (4 January 2006) records fixes to user sign-up, including the status of unconfirmed accounts after an activation email, and new language strings for confirm password and sign-up message. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- Ghost's documentation says member sign up and sign in is available to all visitors by default, with subscription access options 'Anyone can sign up', 'Paid-members only', 'Only people I invite' and 'Nobody', and that creators can provide different levels of access to content. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- Ghost's post settings include 'Post access', which determines visibility: Public, Members only, Paid-members only or Specific tiers. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- WordPress documentation says posts and pages can be set to Public (the default), Password Protected or Private, and that restricting the entire blog to certain users is not part of core WordPress and needs plugins. — source, checked 10 October 2026.