How to Allow User Registration on Your WordPress Site

Enabling user registration on your WordPress site can open up a wide range of possibilities, like building a membership community, allowing guest posts, adding comments, and more.

By allowing users to register, you can boost engagement, streamline content management, and create a more interactive experience for your audience.

In this article, we will show you how to easily allow user registration on your WordPress site and how to manage users. Our clear, step-by-step instructions will be user-friendly. This way, you can easily follow along even if you are new to WordPress.

Why Allow User Registration in WordPress?

Adding a user registration form on your WordPress website can allow users to interact with each other and even build a community around your brand.

Plus, you can accept and post user-generated content on your WordPress blog, like posts, comments, images, videos, and more.

If you have an online store, then you can increase engagement by offering exclusive content or discount offers to customers who are registered on your site.

This can help improve user engagement, increase loyalty, and even help you build an email list by letting you collect email addresses during the registration process.

That being said, let’s see how to easily allow user registration in WordPress.

Here is the list of topics we will cover in this tutorial. You can use the quick links below to jump to different sections:

Enabling User Registration in WordPress

WordPress comes with built-in functionality to manage user registrations. It is turned off by default, but you can easily turn it on.

To do this, simply head over to the Settings » General page in your WordPress admin area.

From here, scroll down to the ‘Membership’ section and check the box next to the ‘Anyone can register‘ option.

Next, you have to select the default user role. This is the user role assigned to each new user who registers on your WordPress website.

Each user role in WordPress comes with its own permissions and capabilities. See our guide on WordPress user roles and permissions to learn more about user roles in WordPress.

The default user role is ‘Subscriber’, which you can change to any other user role available.

For example, if you want users to write posts on your website, then you can change the default user role to Contributor or Author.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Now, your WordPress site is open to user registrations. You can visit your WordPress login page, and you will see an option to register as a new user.

Adding Login and Register Links in WordPress

After opening your website for user registration, you will want to let users know that they can sign up and log in to their accounts.

There are multiple ways to do that.

You can simply add links in your WordPress sidebar to your login and registration page, or you can create custom login and registration pages for your website.

We will show you 3 different methods so you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

Method 1: Adding the Meta Widget to the WordPress Sidebar

The simplest way to add a login link is by adding the meta widget to your sidebar.

Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the ‘Meta’ widget to a sidebar. You can see our guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress for detailed instructions.

The meta widget includes links to register, login / log out, RSS feed, comments feed, and WordPress.org website.

This is how it appears on our example website:

Keep in mind that if you are using a block theme, then the Appearance » Widgets option won’t be available for you. In that case, you can use methods 2 or 3.

Method 2: Creating Custom Login Pages Using WPForms

The problem with the first method is that there is no way to customize the registration or login forms. You can’t add form fields or change the design of the forms, and they won’t match the design of your website.

By using your own custom login pages, you can offer a much better user experience. You can embed your forms on any page on your website and add form fields to collect any information you want.

We will show you different ways to create your own custom login pages. The easiest one is to use the WPForms plugin.

It is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market that comes with a user registration addon. It allows you to easily add and customize login and registration forms anywhere on your website.

First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key.

You can find this information from your account on the WPForms website.

After verification, head over to the WPForms » Addons page from the WordPress dashboard.

Here, scroll down to ‘User Registration Addon’ and click on the ‘Install Addon’ button next to it.

WPForms will install the addon, and then you will need to click on the ‘Activate’ button to start using it.

You are now ready to create custom registration and login forms using WPForms.

Creating a Custom Registration Form

Simply visit the WPForms » Add New page to launch the WPForms form builder.

First, you need to enter a form name and then search for the user registration template under the ‘Select a Template’ section.

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Use Template’ button to continue, and WPForms will create a simple WordPress user registration form for you.

You can now add new fields from the left panel as well as customize the order of existing fields by using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Once you are done adding the fields, click on the ‘Settings’ menu on the left.

Then select the ‘User Registration’ tab.

Here, you can map each form field to information in the user’s profile, select the user role, enable notifications, select the confirmation page, and enable user activation.

The user activation feature helps you reduce spam user registration in WordPress.

If you select the manual method, then all users must be approved by an admin before they can log in to your site.

If you select the email method, then the user must click on an activation link before they can log in to your website.

Besides adding form fields, you can also connect your form with other WPForms addons.

For instance, you can connect to your email marketing service provider and automatically add new users to your email list. Similarly, you can connect WPForms to payment services like PayPal and Stripe to receive online payments.

When you are finished, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button in the top right corner of the screen to save your form settings. You can now exit the form builder by clicking on the ‘Close’ button.

Your user registration form is ready to be added to your WordPress site.

Simply create a new WordPress page or edit an existing page that you would like to use as the registration page.

On the page edit screen, you need to add WPForms blocks to your content area.

From the WPForms block, simply click on the dropdown menu and select the ‘User registration form’ you created earlier.

You can now save or publish your page and then visit it to see your custom user registration page in action.

Creating a Custom Login Form

Now that your custom user registration page is active, you can also create a custom login form for your site with WPForms, making it the best WordPress user registration plugin on the market.

To get started, visit the WPForms » Add New screen. This will launch the form builder interface of WPForms.

You need to provide a name for your custom login form and then select ‘User Login Form’ as your template.

WPForms will now create a new login form.

By default, it only has the username and password fields.

However, you can also add additional fields to the form by dragging them from the left panel.

Next, click on the ‘Settings’ tab and then click on the ‘Confirmation’ tab. This is where you can define what to do after a successful login.

You can show users a message, redirect them to the page they came from, or redirect them to any other page on your site.

Click on the ‘Save’ button in the top right corner of the screen to store your form settings. You can now exit the form builder interface by clicking on the ‘Close’ button.

Your custom login form is ready to be added to your WordPress site.

You can add your custom login form to a page by creating a new page and then adding the WPForms block to the content area.

You can also add your custom login form to a sidebar.

Simply head over to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the WPForms block or the legacy widget to a sidebar.

Select the custom login form you just created from the dropdown menu, and then click on the ‘Update’ button to store your widget settings.

You can now visit your website to see your custom login form in action.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to create a custom login page for WordPress.

Method 3: Create a Custom Login Page Using SeedProd

If you use WPForms alone to create a custom login page, then the design of your login page will still depend on your WordPress theme.

What if you wanted to design a custom login page that looks more professional and sleek?

SeedProd allows you to easily create a beautiful custom login page for your website.

It is the most powerful WordPress page builder on the market. You can use it to create any type of page without writing any code or learning any special design skills.

First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll be asked to enter your license key. You can find this information in your account on the SeedProd website.

Next, visit the SeedProd » Landing Pages screen from the WordPress admin sidebar.

Once you are there, click on the ‘Set up a Login Page’ button.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your login page.

SeedProd comes with several professionally designed templates to choose from, or you can also start with a blank canvas.

After that, you will have to provide a name and URL for your custom login page.

Then click on the ‘Save and Start Editing’ button to continue.

This will launch SeedProd’s page builder interface on your screen.

Here, you’ll see a live preview of your login page where you can point and click to edit any item.

You can also add new blocks to your login page from the left column.

Once you are satisfied with the design, switch to the ‘Page Settings’ tab.

From here, you can redirect users from the default WordPress login page to your custom login page. You can also run your login page on isolation mode, which disables any WordPress header and footer scripts from loading.

Once you are satisfied with your changes, you can simply click on the ‘Save’ button and ‘Publish’ your login page.

You can now open a new browser tab in the Incognito mode and visit your login page to see it in action.

For more details, see our ultimate guide on how to create a custom login page in WordPress.

Bonus: Managing Users in WordPress

You can view all registered users on your website by clicking on the Users menu tab in the WordPress admin dashboard.

WordPress will show you a list of users with their usernames, names, roles, and email addresses.

As an administrator, you can delete any user at any time you want.

You can also edit user profiles, change their roles, and even change their passwords. This gives you full control over what users can or cannot do on your WordPress site.

For more information, you may like to see our beginner’s guide on how to add or remove capabilities to user roles in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to allow user registration on your WordPress site. You may also want to learn how to display WordPress form entries on your site or see our expert picks for the best plugins to efficiently manage multi-author blogs.

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