Thrive Knowledge Base

Apprentice Menu, Widgets & Content: How to Create a Separate Member’s Area Within Your Site

A key component of the Apprentice feature is that it lets you create a separation between your regular content and your membership content. If you wish, you can have two parts to your website: a public-facing part that everyone sees and a member part where you deliver your course or product (and the member part can be protected using a membership plugin).

1) Add a Separate Logo

This part is very much optional, but it nicely illustrates how this public/member separation works. Go to your WordPress admin dashboard and to the Thrive Themes options. There, choose the "Apprentice" tab:

You'll see logo options:

If you activate the "Use Different Logo" option, you will be able to either set a text logo or upload an image logo, just like you can with the regular theme logo options.

This allows you to create an immediately recognizable distinction between the public facing part of your site and the member's area. For example, your public facing logo could be something like this:​

While your logged in members will see this while they look at your course content:

2) Customize the Navigation Menu

Apprentice Pages and Lessons also display a different main navigation menu from the rest of your site. Go to "Appearance" and "Menus" to set it up:

The setup of the menu works just like any other WordPress menu. You can create a new menu and assign it to the "Apprentice Menu" location to show different navigation items in the member's area.

3) Show Different Widget Content

​Go to "Appearance" and "Widgets" to see the new widget options after the Apprentice feature has been activated.

Alongside the regular widget areas (1), you'll also find widget areas specific to Apprentice pages (2). This allows you to easily display different sidebar and footer content in your member's area and your public facing site.