Content locking, aka content gating, is a marketing tactic that lets you include premium content and get extra value out of visitors. But how do you add a content lock to your website?
More importantly, how do you add a content lock to a non-WordPress site, such as a Blogger blog, Joomla, Drupal, or any other platform?
In this article, I’ll provide the two best ways to add a content lock to your website. If you want to learn more about content locking in general, make sure you check out these other articles:
- What Is Content Locking? Everything You Need to Know!
- Content Locking Ideas: What Kinds Of Content Should I Lock?
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Email List With Content Locking
What Content Locking Software Is Best?
Before you can start locking up your content, what do you need? Well, besides great content, you need software to help you out! There are tons of content locking solutions out there (I’ve tried many of them), but here are my two favorites.
The Best Content Locking Platform – Works for both Non-WordPress Sites and WordPress
OptinMonster is my favorite platform for content locking. This is because it offers so many other options, including:
- Lightbox popups
- Full-screen welcome mats
- Floating announcement bars
- Countdown timers
- Coupon wheels
- And yes, content locking!
On top of that, they offer great analytics and split testing to make the most effective campaigns possible. OptinMonster is platform-agnostic, meaning that it functions pretty much everywhere. If you can add JavaScript to your website, then you can use OptinMonster.
I also love that it’s not a WordPress plugin. It has a “helper plugin” for people who use WordPress to make adding the opt-ins to your WordPress site simple, but most of the work is done inside OptinMonster’s website.
I love this because WordPress is good at writing articles. The number of features and functionality that OptinMonster offers would just be a bloated mess inside of WordPress. I feel like this is one area where you don’t want a WordPress plugin.
Read my full tutorial on creating a content locker in WordPress with OptinMonster if you want to know how to do it step-by-step.
The Best Content Locking Plugin for WordPress – Works Only On WordPress
If you have your heart set on using a WordPress plugin, then nothing beats Thrive Leads. I use Thrive Leads on many websites, and it does a great job. It doesn’t have as much functionality as OptinMonster, and I wish they would add a lot more templates, but it is still attractive and flexible.
Thrive Leads is, without question, the best WordPress plugin I’ve found for content locking. I’ve tried 3 or 4 over the years, and they didn’t do a good job. What’s funny is that the other plugins I tried were designed only to do content locking, yet Thrive Leads is superior.
Thrive Leads can create “Sticky” ribbons that sit at the top of your website, lightbox popups, scroll mats, and much more. It also includes A/B split testing so you can create the most effective campaigns possible. It also allows you to use advanced targeting to display the perfect opt-ins in the right places.
Content Locking A Whole Site Or Sections Of A Site – Works for WordPress Only
The best tool for this job is “Restrict Content Pro.” This is a solid WordPress plugin made by the WordPress superstar Pippin Williamson. You might know him from some of his other plugins like Easy Digital Downloads (EDD). Restrict Content Pro makes it easy to lock down your entire website, or just sections of it.
This tool is meant for creating membership sites, but I did want to mention it for anyone who wants more of a “Wall Street Journal” style content locking where you can’t read anything unless you pay for it.
Content Locking on Blogger.com
If you have a blogger.com blog, then OptinMonster will be your best option for content locking. OptinMonster works for almost all hosts and platforms because it is a SaaS (Software as a Service). If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry. For OptinMonster, that’s just fancy speak for “I’m not limited to just WordPress!”
Drupal Content Locking
Like Blogger content locking, to lock content on Drupal, I suggest OptinMonster as your content locking service of choice. It works outside of the requirements of any specific platform, so it will work on Drupal too. As long as you can paste in some JavaScript code, you can use OptinMonster. That means no outdated or beta modules (which is the case, as of this writing, for Drupal).
Content Locking Conclusion
I’ve been locking content on websites since 2013, and it is absolutely the best way for me to generate email subscribers. If you want to increase your email subscribers or social shares, you owe it to yourself to give one of these solutions a try.
Make sure you read our other content locking resources if you need help with learning the basics of content locking, need ideas for types of content to lock or want more information about how to grow your email list with content gating. If you enjoyed this article, make sure you share it on social media so we can help more people!
