How to Limit PDFs to Members

Making PDFs a member perk gives visitors a reason to sign up. This takes one setting, plus a role list if only some members qualify.

Step 1: Turn off guest access

Go to Content to PDF → Configuration → General and untick Allow guests to generate PDFs.

Step 2: Choose the roles

• Empty: Every signed-in user can download PDFs.
• Some roles: Only users with one of them can. On the demo, Administrator and Subscriber were allowed.

Step 3: Save and check as a guest

Click Save Changes. On the demo, three things followed:

• Guests saw no button.
• A signed-in Customer, not in the list, saw no button either.
• A guest opening a reader link got “This PDF is not available.”

Things to know

• The lead form is for guests, so it has nothing to do once guests are off.
• To limit only some content, use the exclusions on the Rules tab instead. See How to Hide the PDF Button on Some Content.