Students or members losing access to course or lesson content they should be able to see — or seeing content they shouldn’t — usually traces to how your course plugin’s access rules are configured against membership levels, enrolment status, or content drip settings, rather than a single, simple bug.
Confirm the exact account, level, and content involved
Note the specific user account, their membership level or enrolment status, and the exact lesson or course affected. Access rules are usually conditional on several factors at once, so knowing precisely which combination is failing narrows this down considerably faster than a general description.
Course & lesson access permission errors
A member's access traced to the actual rule, sync, or caching issue behind it.
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This or something else?
| A specific account can’t access content they should, or can access content they shouldn’t | This fix covers it |
| The issue is specifically about drip-fed content timing, not general access permissions | Content dripping schedule repair |
| You want membership levels and drip content configured for the first time, not an existing error fixed | Membership level & drip content configuration |
| Two different plugins are both trying to control access and conflicting | Access rule conflict between plugins |
What you are seeing
- A paying member unable to access content their level should include
- Free or unenrolled visitors able to view content that should be restricted
- Access working correctly for some accounts but not others with the same level
- The issue possibly starting after a plugin update or a membership level change
Common causes
- A membership level’s access rules configured incorrectly for specific content
- A user’s account not correctly synced to their actual current membership level
- A caching issue serving a restricted page to a visitor who shouldn’t see it
- Conflicting rules between the course plugin and a separate membership or access plugin
- A specific course or lesson individually excluded from a level’s bulk access rule, overriding the level’s general setting
What we do
- Reproduce the specific access issue with the affected account
- Review the relevant access rules against the intended configuration
- Correct the misconfiguration or sync issue found
- Verify the fix with the originally affected account
- Check for the same pattern affecting other accounts at the same level
What is included
- The specific access issue identified and corrected
- Verification with the originally affected account
- A check for the same pattern elsewhere
- The pre-fix backup, kept for 30 days
Not included
- Configuring membership levels or drip content from scratch — a separate, related fix
- Resolving a conflict between two separate plugins both controlling access — a separate, related fix
- Content dripping schedule issues specifically — a separate, related fix
- Ongoing monitoring for future access issues
Questions about this fix
Why would access work for one member but not another at the same level?
Individual account data can drift from what the level should grant — a sync issue during a plan change or a manual account edit are common reasons two members at the same level end up with different actual access.
Could caching really cause someone to see content they shouldn't?
Yes, if a restricted page is cached and served to a visitor without re-checking their actual access rights, caching can override the access rule until the cache is corrected.
Is this urgent if paying members are affected?
Yes, worth prioritising if paying members are being denied content they're entitled to, since that has a direct impact on their experience and your credibility.
Will this fix affect every member, or just the one reported?
We check for the same pattern affecting other accounts at the same level, since an individual report often points at a broader, shared misconfiguration.
How do I know if this is an access rule problem or a drip content timing problem?
If content should be visible now but isn't, or visible now but shouldn't be, that's an access rule issue; if content is correctly hidden now but scheduled to appear later and isn't following that schedule, that's specifically a drip timing issue.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.