John and Jennifer, I understand the challenge you face as I had the exact same problem.
I will share my method/solution in case it helps you and others.
The problem occurs when you want active (logged in) members to ALSO have access to restricted content.
So how do you allow login when they are no longer members? If they login they will have full content access?
And how do you allow login and renewal when Membership Pro says their subscription is expired?
When their membership ceases, you need to cease the access to the restricted content, BUT they need to still be able to login if they wish to re-commence their membership at any time in the future using the same username/email.
So you need to move them to a different group when the subscription expires - this is done with the excellent plugin called Joomla Groups.
In addition, many associations have a defined 'grace period' to allow 'expired subscribers' to renew.
My solution was to use the Joomla Groups plugin along with a manual change once a year, and allow renewals until 31st March
(Note all our memberships are yearly calendar based subscriptions - 1st January to 31st December.)
So on 1st January each year ALL memberships that have not renewed expire - the Joomla Groups plugin is set to automatically move all expired subscribers from Member group into a new (temporary) group - I call it Provisional.
The Provisional group has the same permissions as Member, so all expired members can continue as normal during our 'grace period' of three months. Even though they are in a different group, they can still login, they can still view restricted content etc.
I also use the provisional group for new members whilst their membership application is being considered (there are minimum requirements for membership). So it is a temporary group separate to Members and Expired Members
This also allows us to have a clear list of members who haven't yet renewed, handy for reminders/mailouts etc.
After the three month grace period, ie on 1st April each year, we officially regard members as expired.
I MANUALLY move all users that were moved to Provisional Group into a group called Expired Members. They are finally expired members in the true sense.
Permissions of Expired Members are set to allow login BUT does not allow viewing of restricted content.
So all expired members remain as registered users, allowing them to login and re-join with their existing credentials at any time in the future.
I am still working on the final challenge - that is, if they DO re-join, the Joomla Groups plugin at this stage does not offer an option to REMOVE them from the Expired Group when they renew - I am hoping Tuan will add this option to the Joomla Groups plugin (I have added it to the wishlist).
I hope this is clear as it can be quite confusing, hope it helps?
