If you have ever wanted to allow your website users to register themselves on your WordPress website, this short tutorial will quickly walk you through the steps for enabling user self-registration.
There are several Membership plugins (such as WishList Member, eMember, etc) that provide quite a bit of functionality in the area of membership management. But if all you require is basic user registration, then WordPress’s builtin membership capabilities might be enough for you.
Enable self-registration
Login to your WordPress admin area and navigate to the Settings -> General screen
Check the option “Anyone can register”
When a user self-registers, WordPress can assign a default role to the new user. You can read more about WordPress Roles and Capabilities here. Here’s a quick summary of the roles:
- Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
- Editor – Somebody who can publish and manage posts and pages as well as manage other users’ posts, etc.
- Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
- Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish them
- Subscriber – Somebody who can only manage their profile
If you are not sure about which role to pick, pick Subscriber as the other roles all allow users to add content to your website at the very least.
The Login Screen
Once self-registration is enabled, the WordPress login screen will have a “Register” link as shown above. You may have to inform your users about how to get to the login page. The login page can usually reached by this url:
http://yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php
The Registration Screen
When the Register link is clicked, WordPress displays the Registration screen which looks like this. The user can specify the username of their choice and an email address.
The Registration Email
WordPress creates the account and emails the password to the user.
The screenshot above shows what the email looks like.
The email contains:
- The Username
- The Password
- And the Login URL
The Profile Page
When the user logs into the system, he is shown the Profile page as shown above. The Profile page allows the user change his profile settings, including changing the password. A user with a different Role (such as an administrator) will see different settings.
Conclusion
WordPress provides basic capabilities for creation and self-registration of users. If you need more advanced functionality try some of the more advanced plugins. Some are free while others are paid.
If you have questions, put them down in the comments section below.
If you have a favorite membership plugin, let us know what you use and why.
If you are still unsure on how to proceed or have any questions contact StressLessWeb. I will be happy to help you out.
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