Torii Membership System

Running a Cohort

A cohort is a scheduled run of your course. You pick a start date, fill the group, and everyone moves through the material on the same calendar. This page walks the full setup in Torii: the cohort itself, automated enrollment, content that unlocks on the group's schedule, and pages that show each cohort its own details.

1. Create the cohort

Create a cohort for the course and give it a clear name: the offering and the date range, something like "Spring 2026" or "October Intensive." The name is what you'll see in the admin and what members can display on the site, so make it meaningful to both.

Set the start date. It powers time-relative displays later (see Cohort Variables), and it's your reference point for every deadline you communicate.

2. Enroll with tags

Cohort membership is tag-driven, so enrollment works exactly like everything else in Torii. When someone buys or registers, your CRM automation applies the cohort's enrollment tag, and the member joins the cohort automatically. The same automation can enroll them in the course itself, so the whole flow runs hands-off.

This also means exits are handled: when the cohort's tag comes off, membership ends. A late joiner is just a contact who gets the tag mid-run.

3. Drip content on the group's schedule

The defining constraint of a cohort is that content unlocks for everyone at the same time, not per-student. Configure your course's drip so each module opens relative to the cohort's start date rather than each member's enrollment date.

With the LMS integrations, this is course-level scheduling: lesson one available at launch, module two a week in, and so forth. Because everyone shares the one start date, a single drip schedule serves the entire group.

4. Give each cohort its own face

Every page in the course can display information specific to the viewer's cohort: their instructor's name, their section's meeting link, their start date. The [memb_cohort_info] shortcode looks up the current member's cohort for the course and outputs any variable you've attached to it.

A welcome page that says "Your instructor: Dana. Live session: Thursdays at noon. Your cohort began March 2." does more for completion than any amount of "Welcome, valued learner." The full recipe is in Cohort Variables.

5. Run the cohort

The machinery is now doing its part. What's left is the part no plugin does:

  • Show up at the start. The first week sets the tone; be visibly present while the group forms.
  • Keep deadlines real. Post the week's goal, acknowledge the milestone when it passes. Small public checkpoints beat one big final deadline.
  • Use the room. Point students at each other's questions before answering everything yourself. Peer answers are a feature of the format, not a failure of support.
  • Watch the finish line. In the last stretch, nudge the quiet ones. Students who complete become testimonials; students who vanish become refunds.

When the run ends, keep the tag on the members. Alumni of a finished cohort are a warm audience for the next launch, and "graduates of the October Intensive" is a segment your CRM already has.