On the fence about enabling user registration on your WordPress website?
WordPress comes with built-in functionality to help enable user registration on your website. Using these built-in tools, you can set various WordPress user roles for users who register on your site, such as subscribers, contributors, authors, etc.
Once you allow user registration, users will be able to register and login to your WordPress website to perform various actions as per the user roles.
Well, allowing user registration in WordPress isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, because you will need to manage various tasks such as login forms, custom fields, user roles, and so on.
All this could get intimidating if you’re a beginner with little to no technical experience.
To make things simpler, in this post, we have featured a step-by-step guide to adding user registration on your WordPress site.
So let’s dive in.
How to Allow User Registration on Your WordPress Site (Step-by-step)
WordPress makes it super easy to add user registration on your website. Here we have listed two legit ways to add user registration on your WordPress site.
- The first way is to use the default WordPress module to help you enable user registration.
- The second way is to use a WordPress plugin to enable user registration.
Note: If you’re looking to have flexible control over the setup of user registration on your site, we suggest you follow the second method to enable the user registration on your site using Ninja Forms.
Enabling User Registration Using the Default Feature of WordPress
WordPress makes it super easy to manage and grow WordPress websites with a plethora of customization and settings options.
When it comes to enabling user registration, the WordPress plugin comes with built-in functionality to help you manage user registration in WordPress on your website.
However, by default, if you have never configured it before, the feature is turned off.
Step #1: Navigate to Your WordPress Dashboard
The first step is to navigate to your WordPress Dashboard >> Settings >> General.
From there, scroll down a bit until you find the “Membership” section and then find the “Membership” module to enable the option. Just enable the “Anyone can register” option from there.
Step #2: Define the User Role
Here in the second step, we need to choose the user roles in your WordPress website. Now select the user roles that you want to assign to users who register on your website.
For this specific case, you can select the user role of “Subscriber“.
The default user role here is “Subscriber“, but you have the option to change to any other user role as per your needs and requirements.
Let’s say you want users who register on your site to contribute content; you can choose the role “Contributor” in this case.
Once you’re done choosing the user role, make sure you click on the save changes button to make the changes live on your WordPress website.
After saving the changes made, your WordPress website will accept user registration.
Note: You should never select “Administrator” user role while enabling the user registration on your site. If you choose the administrator user role, all the users who register on your site will have complete access to your WordPress where they can delete/add posts and page, add or delete themes/plugins, and so on.
Adding the Login & Register Option in Your WordPress Website
Now, your site is open to user registration; so it’s time to let your users know that they can register on your WordPress website. You need to add the login and register links to the login and registration page on your website.
You can easily add a login & register module in the sidebar of your WordPress website. Once you add the login & register module in the sidebar, your site users can easily register and login to your WordPress website.
Related Reading: How to Create a Custom Login Page in WordPress
Step #1: Adding the Meta Widget to Add Login & Register Module
Adding the meta widget to the WordPress sidebar is an easy way to add a login link.
WordPress comes with a simple default way to show up the “Register & Login” link to your WordPress site. You can enable this option using a simple “Meta” widget.
To add it, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard >> Appearance >> Widgets. Now you need to add the “Meta” widget to a sidebar. You can also add the meta name as “Log in”, so that’s how it will show up in your website’s sidebar.
The meta widget includes the register and login links that enable users to easily register and login to your WordPress website.
And that’s how to add the meta widget to your WordPress website sidebar.
Enabling User Registration Using a WordPress Plugin (Ninja Forms)
The Ninja Forms WordPress plugin enables you to add user registration on your WordPress website easily.
What’s more, the plugin gives more flexibility when compared to built-in functionality to add user registration on your WordPress website.
To add user registration on your WordPress website, you need to use the Ninja Forms plugin with the User Management Add-on.
You need to make sure you have installed and activated the Ninja Forms plugin and the User Management Add-on on your WordPress website.
You can install these plugins and add-ons the way you usually add the plugins on your WordPress site.
Step #1: Navigate to Your WordPress Dashboard
Login to your WordPress site and navigate to your WordPress Dashboard >> Ninja Forms >> Add New.
Once you’re there, you will see various forms templates, including Login Form, Register User, and Update Profile. To start configuring the plugin, you need to click on the “Register User” template.
Once you click on the “Register User” template, you will see various fields, such as username, first name, last name, email, password, confirm the password, and so on.
If you want, you can delete some custom fields, and it also allows you to add custom fields on your own if you want to.
After that, you need to take a look at the “Emails & Action” tab. Make sure you enable all the options you can see on your screen.
The “Register User” action is very important here; it maps out the fields in your submission to the WordPress user database.
You can choose the corresponding field available there in the form. Check the last attribute field and select the role here; you can choose the WordPress user roles available.
We suggest choosing the “Subscriber” role, which will enable users who register on your site to access all content available on your website. Otherwise, you can choose any user roles as per your needs.
After that, you need to navigate to the Advanced Settings tab, where you will see some settings options.
Here, you can choose the options to “Login user upon successful registration“, “refresh the page upon registration,” or choose other options available if it’s convenient for you.
Step #2: Adding the Login In Module In Your WordPress Site
Here you need to navigate to your WordPress Dashboard >> Ninja Forms >> Add New. From there, choose the “Login Form” template, and then you will see various custom fields in the form builder, such as username, password, submit button, and so on.
You can also add or delete custom fields from there as per your requirements.
Once you’re satisfied with the template, you need to click on the “Publish” button and then copy then shortcode into your new login page.
Once you copy and paste the shortcode and publish the login page, your login module will be added to your WordPress website.
Conclusion: How to Allow User Registration on Your WordPress Site
So this how you can add a robust user registration on your WordPress website. You can simply follow our step-by-step walkthrough to allow user registration on your WordPress website.
How do you enable WordPress user registration on your website? Do you use a plugin to add the user registration or follow the built-in functionality of WordPress? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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