How to create group memberships in WordPress

Decide whether one person will pay for the group and manage separate child accounts. Write down the parent membership, the child membership, the number of seats, what content each account can access and what should happen when the parent membership expires.

Give every member their own login if they need individual progress, permissions or activity records. Do not use one shared login for a team or family.

For a small, admin-managed group, create each account from Users → Add New and assign an appropriate WordPress role. Use your membership or restriction plugin to grant the required content access, then record the parent account and its child accounts in a custom field, spreadsheet or other private admin record.

This route is fine when staff handle changes and billing. It does not provide a proper parent dashboard, automatic seat counting, invitations, shared subscription status or automatic removal of child access. WordPress support threads commonly show that parent-child management is not part of ordinary membership or profile plugins without extra development.

For a real group membership system, create at least two membership levels: one for the account owner and one for the sponsored members. The group-account documentation describes these as the parent account and child account levels.

Keep the levels separate even if both account types can view similar content. The distinction lets the system identify who pays, who manages the group and which accounts belong to it.

Install and activate a membership plugin that supports parent and child accounts, then enable its group-account or sponsored-member feature. Create the frontend page where the parent can manage the group, add available seats and invite members. Paid Memberships Pro documents this flow as a separate manage-group page, with invite emails and child-account access handled by the add-on.

Check the page while logged in as the parent account. A normal child account should not be able to change the group, alter the seat count or manage another parent account.

Test a complete group before inviting real members: parent checkout, adding a child, accepting an invitation, child login, removing a child, using the final seat and changing or expiring the parent membership.

Pay particular attention to expiry and migrations. Support threads describe child accounts becoming disconnected or orphaned after older parent-child snippets were replaced, so do not mix custom relationship code with a new group-account system without checking how existing records will be migrated.

For a business, association, course provider or family membership site, use Paid Memberships Pro with its group-account or sponsored-members add-on. It is designed for one parent account to pay for and manage multiple child accounts, with separate parent and child levels, a group-management page, invitations and admin controls.

This is faster than building the relationship, billing logic, seat limits, email flow and expiry handling yourself. The manual method remains suitable for a handful of members managed directly by an administrator.