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LINE-Only Articles (Continue Reading via LINE Sign-Up)

Show the rest of an article only to readers who've registered with your LINE official account

Trade the rest of the article for a LINE sign-up

Insert a break partway through an article, and you can show everything past that point only to readers who have registered with your LINE official account. It works the same way as note's "add as a LINE friend to read the full article," exchanging a LINE sign-up for access instead of money.

Here's the flow readers go through.

  1. After reading partway through the article, they see a notice saying "the rest of this article is free for readers who register with LINE"
  2. They tap the button to add your account as a LINE friend, and receive an unlock code via the greeting message (or an auto-reply message)
  3. They return to the article, enter the code, and the rest appears. After that, the same browser stays unlocked (remembered for 30 days)

You don't need to set up LINE Developers or any external API. All you need is a LINE official account (the free plan works).

Setup steps (3 minutes)

  1. Under "Settings > LINE-Only Articles," enter your friend-add URL (a lin.ee URL) and an unlock code (any passphrase you like)
  2. After saving, the same screen shows the text to paste into LINE. Paste it into the "Greeting message" or the "Auto-reply message" for a keyword response in LINE Official Account Manager
  3. On the editor screen of the article you want to gate, check the "Sorabun LINE-Only" box. Put [sorabun_linegate] in the body text where you want the break (if you don't, the first 40% is shown for free)

Leak prevention works the same as paid articles

Hiding the body text is pointless if the full text can be grabbed some other way. The same protections used for paid articles are built in from the start.

  • The feed (RSS), excerpts, and the REST API only expose the free portion
  • Structured data tells search engines that a gated portion exists (hiding it without disclosing this is treated as cloaking and can hurt rankings)
  • Pages shown to someone who has unlocked the content are never added to the page cache (preventing the accident of the full text being served to unregistered visitors)
  • Brute-forcing the code is stopped by a rate limit

Things worth knowing

  • If someone shares the code, others can read it without registering. note makes the same trade-off. Since the goal is lead generation, what matters more than a strict lockout is making sure "the desire to keep reading outweighs the hassle of registering." If this bothers you, rotate the code monthly. Replacing it forces every reader to re-enter it (registered readers just need to check LINE for the new code)
  • If an article also has paid-article settings, the paywall takes priority. To gate it with LINE instead, set the paid article to "free"
  • While either the friend-add URL or the code is unset, gated articles show their full text. This avoids leaving readers stuck at a dead end where they've registered but don't know the code
  • If you just want to check a specific article, logged-in editors and administrators always see the full text

Combining with LINE step broadcasts

Friends gained through this feature flow straight into the entry point of a step broadcast. Design it so the greeting message delivers a bonus (like a guide) alongside the unlock code, then leads into a product pitch over the following days. Every time an article is read, it adds another step to your sales funnel.