What members see
You’ll need: Member updates, Member portals, Membership types — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.
Members log in on your public site, not in the app your staff use. Understanding that split explains most questions members ask.
Two different logins
Your colleagues log in to the app: sidebar, modules, permissions.
Members log in on your public pages with an email one-time code. No sidebar, no modules. They see your site, plus whatever their membership unlocks.
A member is not a user of the app, and giving one a staff login to “let them see their account” is the wrong instrument entirely — it hands them your business records.
Members-only content
Any update, opportunity or course lesson can carry access membership types. Empty means public; set means only holders of a listed tier can open it.
Member updates are the module for content aimed at members specifically — a type, a publication date, a headline, a body, photos, a rank, and the same access membership types gate.
Gated content stays visible but locked to everyone else. That is the design: a members-only notice nobody can see advertises nothing, so the headline is the invitation and the body is the benefit.
Active tier, again
Access checks for a currently active tier. An expired member gets the locked view plus a prompt to renew — which is the right moment to ask, since they are standing in front of something they used to be able to read.
The member widget
On every public page there is a persistent chip in the corner. Logged out, it opens a login. Logged in, it shows the member their tier and status, and lets them out again.
It is the whole member account experience, and it is deliberately small. A member organisation does not need to build a portal; the widget plus gated content is the portal.
Member portals
The member portals module records a member and exists for organisations that need a portal record per member.
Most organisations do not need to touch it — the widget and gated content cover the ordinary case. Reach for it when you have a specific requirement it answers, not as a first step.
What to actually publish
The mistake is gating everything, which leaves your public site empty and gives visitors no reason to join.
Publish enough openly that somebody can see what the organisation does and is worth joining. Gate the things membership genuinely buys. A site where the only public page says “members only” converts nobody.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, publish one public member update and one gated to a tier. View both logged out, then as an expired member, then as an active one. Three states, three different pages.