Membership websites typically fall into two categories.

The first has a portion of its content hidden from the general public, only accessible via a password. This can be the same password for all visitors in the know. As the owner of the website you can change this password as often as you wish. You can inform your privileged visitors via a mailing list for example. This is a simple setup which is easy to maintain but offers limited control. An example use could be to place some downloadable documents or audio that you only want a certain set of people accessing. As anyone with the password can access, you won’t know exactly who does and who doesn’t.

Note that even this fairly simple system can be innovatively used as the first gate to a much more complex solution. An example might be a wholesaler wanting different pages on their site for trade and public customers.

The second solution is a membership site where each member has an individual password that they set and maintain themselves. With this approach you can set different levels of membership, with different privileges and you can gather information on who accesses what on your site.