When you add a content protection perk to a membership plan, Zendra automatically restricts access to that content on your storefront. Non-members (or visitors who aren’t logged in) will see a restriction message instead of the full content.
Zendra installs small code snippets into your theme to handle this — you don’t need to make any manual changes to your theme files.
What non-members see
By default, restricted content is fully hidden. Non-members see a message letting them know the content requires a membership, along with a prompt to sign up or log in.
Restriction scope
You can control how much of a page is restricted when content protection applies. Go to Settings > General > Protected content and choose a restriction scope:
- Section — Only the content section itself is restricted. Other sections on the page (hero banners, featured collections, etc.) remain visible. This is a good fit for themes where pages include multiple sections beyond the main content area.
- Full page (recommended) — Everything between the header and footer is hidden and replaced with the restriction notice. Use this when you want the entire page to be gated, not just the content block.
This setting affects all restricted pages, blog posts, and products across your store.
Excerpt previews (teasers)
You can also show a teaser preview of restricted content instead of hiding it entirely. This is a great way to give visitors a taste of what’s behind the paywall — enough to make them want to join.
When excerpts are enabled, non-members will see the first ~50 words of the restricted content (the title and a snippet of the body), followed by a paywall message prompting them to become a member to unlock the full content.
To enable excerpt previews, go to Settings > General > Manage Protected Content and toggle on “Show excerpts of protected content to non-members.” This applies to all content and product view restriction perks across your store.
Excerpt previews work for:
- Protected pages
- Protected blog articles (uses the article excerpt if one is set, otherwise the first ~50 words)
- Protected product descriptions
What members see
Once a customer is logged in as a member of the required plan, all restricted content displays normally — no paywall, no excerpts, just the full content as you’ve written it.
What you can restrict
Content protection is configured as a perk on your membership plans. You can restrict:
- All pages or specific pages
- All blog articles or specific articles, blogs, or articles by tag or author
- All products or specific products, collections, or products by vendor or tag
- Pages or products using a specific template
For product restrictions, you can also separately control view access (hide the listing entirely) and purchase access (show the listing but prevent non-members from adding to cart). See Member exclusive products for more on purchase restrictions.
Cross-context content blocks
Content restrictions carry across block types. If you restrict a page and that page’s content block is embedded in a blog post (common on Horizon-style and newer Shopify themes), the restriction still applies — non-members won’t see the protected content regardless of where it’s displayed. This means you don’t need to set up separate restrictions for every place a content block might appear.