Hi Kate, the registration flow is the same for signing up for any type of membership except the free one (this one doesn’t have any payment involved). I have replied to your comment which should answer the “Trial” membership option.
The basic member registration flow is the following:
1) Visitor lands on your site.
2) Want to become a member after seeing some of the awesome content.
3) Follows the “Register” or “Join Today” link.
4) The above mentioned links will take them to the “Membership Payment” Page. It may look similar to the one here (http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/eMember-demo/members-home/join-us)
5) From this page they can decide which membership option they want to choose (eg. Free, Silver, Gold or whatever you are offering)
6) If they choose the “Free Membership” then they just follow the link and sign up for a free membership. Remember, the free membership sign up is only possible if you (the admin) allow free membership on your site.
7) If they choose a “Paid Membership” then they make a payment by clicking on the payment button for the appropriate membership.
Once the Payment is confirmed (at this point the plugin knows what type of membership this member wants), the plugin will create the appropriate membership account for this visitor.
9) The member will receive an email that contains a UNIQUE link to complete the registration.
10) When the member clicks on that link in the email it will let them choose a “username” and “password” and complete the registration. At this point the member can log into the site.
Step 9 and 10 are additional steps that allows the member to choose their own “username” and “password”. Many membership plugin just randomly creates a “username” and “password” for the member and completes the process at step 8. From my experience I know what most people do not like to receive random “username” and “password” assigned to them so in WP eMember I made sure the members can choose the login credentials.
Let me know if this makes sense