Chances are you've heard the term paywall used in relation to online news sites. A paywall is a system that prevents users from accessing premium content without a paid subscription. Paywalls come in different varieties: the hard paywall and the soft (or metered) paywall. Hard paywalls place a strict wall around website content and only allow subscribers to pass. Soft paywalls, on the other hand, allow site visitors to have a sample of premium content before being prompted to subscribe. The Wallstreet Journal, The Guardian and The New York Times all use paywalls and there's a big reason--money. Many news outlets have found that by placing restrictions on their online content they're able to garner more subscriptions to both their websites and their print publications.
The Bondware team is committed to helping news publishers grow revenues on the web and off. With that in mind, we are excited to announce the release of Publish version 4.27 with some exciting new features.
Metered Paywall
The highlight of Publish version 4.27 is the metered paywall. This feature allows you to set the number of articles a visitor can read for free on your site. Each time the user views an article a popup will inform the visitor that they're viewing premium content for free and that they have a limited number of views. Once the visitor has used up all their free views they will no longer be able to read premium articles that are behind a paywall and will be shown a restricted content message. The popups and the restricted content message are 100% customizable with text, images and links. Curious? See an example here.
Paywall Management
Managing section permissions is now much easier with the addition of the new Paywall Settings page. You can access this page by going to Admin|Content|Paywall Settings on your site. This page lets you specify the permissions for each section on your site. You can set a section to be behind a metered paywall, only available to subscribed members or open to the public. Here you can also set your paywall popup messages, your restricted access message, the number of free views visitors are allowed when using the metered paywall and the orientation of the paywall popup.
Need help getting your metered paywall set up? That's why we're here. Email any questions you might have to support@bondware.com.
