How to Display Recently Registered Users in WordPress

Displaying recently registered users on your WordPress site can help create a sense of community and encourage others to join. It shows off an active and growing user base, which can attract new members, foster engagement, and build trust.

However, managing and displaying this information effectively can be challenging. You’ll need to ensure user privacy, present the data attractively, and integrate it seamlessly into your site’s design.

In this article, we’ll show you how to display recently registered users in WordPress to boost user participation.

Why Display Recently Registered Users in WordPress?

If you run a membership site, online course, forum, or any other type of WordPress website that allows user registration, then you may want to display your recently registered users.

This adds social proof and also gives other members a chance to welcome new members to the community. If you run a small business website, you can even create a filterable directory of your team members or contributors.

There are all kinds of reasons to display your recently registered users in WordPress:

• Create a resource of shared contact information.
• Showcase a list of donors for your nonprofit.
• Highlight a list of recently registered business owners.
• Encourage new forum sign-ups by showing a large and active community.

With that in mind, we’ll show you how you can display recently registered users in WordPress. You can simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use:

• Display recently registered users with Formidable Forms (Customizable)
• Display recently registered users with WP User Manager (Simple Method)
• Display recently registered users by adding code to WordPress (Advanced)

Ready? Let’s get started.

Method 1. Display Recently Registered Users with Formidable Forms

The best way to display recently registered users is to use the Formidable Forms plugin. It’s one of the top contact form and best user registration plugins for WordPress in the market.

This plugin has advanced features that let you format, filter, and display user-submitted data, including user profile data, on the front end of your website.

You can use it to create all kinds of useful online tools like web directories, online calculators, and more. Plus, you have complete control over your user directories’ appearance and function.

It even integrates with MemberPress, so you can easily display a list of your recently registered members on your membership website.

Note: Formidable Forms won’t automatically display all new users. Instead, it gives you complete control over which users and what information is displayed. To display a user in your directory, a separate form will need to be created and filled out. We’ll show you how.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Formidable Forms plugin. For more details, feel free to see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll need to go to Formidable » Global Settings.

Then, simply click the ‘Connect an Account’ button or manually enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the Formidable Forms website.

Once you’ve done that, go ahead and click the ‘Save License’ button.

Next, you need to install the Formidable Directory addon. Depending on your plan, this addon may already be active.

If not, then you’ll need to go to the Formidable Directory page and click the ‘Get Formidable Directory’ button.

After you complete the purchase, it will automatically be added to your account.

Next, let’s go to Formidable Forms » Add-Ons and search for the ‘Directory’ addon.

Once found, you’ll want to click the ‘Install’ button.

After that, navigate to Formidable » Global Settings.

Then, go ahead and click the ‘Directory’ menu option.

This will automatically start the setup wizard to help you create your user directory. If you haven’t connected your site to Formidable Forms, then you’ll be asked to do that now.

The next step is to click the ‘Install & Activate’ button to have any required add-ons ready for use.

Now, you can click the ‘User/Member’ box to display your recently registered users and choose a ‘Two Column’ or ‘Table List’ display.

Then, simply enter a page name for your listing form and your directory page and click the ‘Create Now’ button.

This will automatically create the necessary forms, views, and pages to display your users, but it doesn’t publish them yet, so you can still make changes.

After that, you can click the ‘View Page’ button in the ‘Customize Your New Pages’ section.

This will take you to a page with your registered user list. 

This page includes a search bar, A-Z filter, and boxes containing each of your registered users. Feel free to take advantage of these features to explore your user list.

When everything is set, it’s time for publishing.

To do this, simply click the ‘Edit Page’ button at the top of the screen.

This will open the page editor screen. You can edit this page and make necessary adjustments just as you would with any other WordPress page.

When you’ve finished editing the page, you can click the ‘Publish’ button to make it live.

If you want to customize how your registered user directory looks, then go to Formidable » Views.

In this area, you’ll want to hover over the view that was just created and click ‘Edit.’

This will bring you to the view editor screen.

Here, you can fully customize how your user directory looks. For example, you could limit the number of users per page, filter and sort the user entries, or add more content to their individual profiles.

Once you’re finished making changes, go ahead and click the ‘Update’ button.

It will automatically update the user directory you published earlier.

Publish Your Form to Collect Information From New Users

After you customize and publish your user directory, you’ll need to publish the form connected to the directory, too.

Users who have already registered on your WordPress site will need to fill out this separate form to be listed in the user directory.

First, you’ll want to navigate to Pages » All Pages and then click on the page that was created earlier. In this case, it’s ‘Add a Listing’.

This will bring you to the page editor screen, where you’ll see the page title and a shortcode.

Next, simply click the ‘Publish’ button to make your page live.

Now, you can view your page as well as your user registration form. 

New users can use this form to fill out their user directory profile information on your website.

If you want to customize the form fields, then navigate to Formidable » Forms.

Next, click on the form you named earlier. In this case, the ‘User Directory Profile’ form.

This will launch the form builder.

If you want to add new form fields, simply drag them from the options panel on the left onto your form.

To delete existing form fields, you can click on the field and click the ‘Three Dots’ menu option.

Go ahead and click’ Delete’ from the available dropdown menu items.

Once you’ve finished customizing your form, make sure to click the ‘Update’ button to save your changes. Your form will then automatically update.

Method 2. Display Recently Registered Users with Dynamic User Directory

Another way to display recently registered users is with the free Dynamic User Directory plugin. While it’s not as advanced or customizable as Formidable Forms, it lets you display a simple list of your recently registered users.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, you’ll need to go to Settings » Dynamic User Directory to configure your directory settings.

You can control how your registered user list is sorted in the ‘Sort Field’ dropdown. Then, you’ll choose which kind of directory type you want to display from ‘Directory Type’.

After that, you can enable a directory search feature by checking the ‘Directory Search’ box.

If you want to exclude certain user roles or specific users, then you can select them from the drop-down list.

Next, let’s control how your directory looks and the user information that will be displayed.

To do this, simply go to the ‘Listing Display Settings’ section. Here, you can control the user’s name, avatars, borders, and more.

Below that, in the ‘Directory Totals Settings’ meta box, you can choose the total number of users, customize the text, and more.

Displaying the total number of users can be helpful if you want to use social proof to encourage new users to create an account on your site.

Next, you can customize how the letter links and pagination displays on your user list.

You might want to set the number of users to show per page, change the spacing, and more.

Once you’re finished, go ahead and click the ‘Save options’ button at the bottom of the screen to save your directory.

This will create and display a shortcode for your user directory at the top of the page. You’ll need to copy this to add your directory to your site.

Simply open the page, post, or widget area to display your list of users.

The next step is to click the ‘+’ icon and search for ‘Shortcode.’ Once found, you can click on it.

Once you’ve added the ‘Shortcode’ block to the ediror, all you need to do is paste the shortcode into the box.

Then, go ahead and click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button.

Now, you can view your list of recently registered users on your site.

You can repeat the above steps to add the list of recently registered users to a post or widget area.

Method 3. Display Recently Registered Users by Adding Code to WordPress

Another way you can display your recently registered users is by adding code to WordPress. If you haven’t done this before, then see our guide on how to copy and paste code in WordPress.

You can add the following code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file or by using a code snippets plugin like WPCode (recommended):

function wpb_recently_registered_users() { 

global $wpdb;

$recentusers = '<ul class="recently-user">';

$usernames = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT user_nicename, user_url, user_email FROM $wpdb->users ORDER BY ID DESC LIMIT 5");

foreach ($usernames as $username) {

if (!$username->user_url) :

$recentusers .= '<li>' .get_avatar($username->user_email, 45) .$username->user_nicename."</a></li>";

else :

$recentusers .= '<li>' .get_avatar($username->user_email, 45).'<a href="'.$username->user_url.'">'.$username->user_nicename."</a></li>";

endif;
}
$recentusers .= '</ul>';

return $recentusers;
}

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add custom code in WordPress.

This code snippet creates a simple list of your recently registered users and displays the avatar image and username.

Now, there are two different ways you can display your recently registered users. The first is by adding a template tag to your theme’s template files, like sidebar.php, footer.php, and more.

To learn more, see our WordPress template hierarchy cheat sheet to help you find the right theme template file.

Then, you’ll want to add the following template tag code snippet:

<?php wpb_recently_registered_users(); ?>

The second method is easier for beginners and lets you display newly registered users by using a shortcode.

First, let’s add the following code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file or by using a code snippets plugin just below the code you added earlier.

add_shortcode('wpb_newusers', 'wpb_recently_registered_users');

This code will create the following shortcode you can use in your posts, pages, and widget areas.

[wpb_newusers]

To add the shortcode to your website, simply open the page where you want the list of users to display.

Then, you’ll want to click the ‘+’ add block icon, search for ‘Shortcode,’ and select it.

After that, you can paste the shortcode you copied above into the shortcode box.

When you’re done making changes, click the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make your changes live.

You can follow the same steps by adding the shortcode to a post or a widget area.

Now, you can view your list of recently registered users. To adjust how they appear, you would need to add custom CSS to your website.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to display recently registered users in WordPress. Next, you may also want to see our guide on how to block a WordPress user without deleting their account or our expert picks of the best free user management plugins for WordPress.

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