It's definitely not as daunting of a task as you might think to turn your simple WordPress site into a basic membership site. Let's say you have different layers of content, and you want to make your site accessible to everyone, but add a "premium content" layer. You can easily do so with a FREE WordPress plug-in called WP Simple Membership.
This video walks you through the steps to get up and running, as well as gives you an overview of different functionality that the plug-in has.
It automatically creates log-in, registration and password reset pages for you, allows you to create different membership levels, allow for free levels or integrate with payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal for premium levels.
This is great for content rich sites or virtual event sites like the example in the video.
You can protect content at the category, post and page levels, both dynamically or individually.
This video also shows the different add-ons available to extend the functionality of the plug-in.
For those not wanting or needing a more robust solution like MemberPress, Simple Membership is my recommended alternative.
