WordPress has built-in option to enable public registration. The feature works in all single WordPress sites, WordPress multisite networks and BuddyPresss based social networking websites. One can easily enable registration by logging into WordPress admin area then navigating to Dashboard -> Settings -> General page and ticking the option ‘Anyone can register’. In this tutorial we are providing you a list of some good and free WordPress plugins we have tested for extending and customizing default WordPress registration process.
Theme My Login
A very good plugin which themes the WordPress login, registration and forgot password pages according to the theme activated in your WordPress site. It creates a page to use in place of wp-login.php, using a page template from your theme. Also includes a widget for sidebar login.
Features
- Your WordPress site’s registration page, log in page and password recovery pages get matched to the rest of your website
- The plugin includes a customizable widget which you can use to enable your users to login anywhere from your website
- You can redirect your users after log in and log out according to their roles
- The plugin shows gravatar to users who are logged in
- You can assign custom links to users who are logged in based on their role
- You can customize user emails for registration and/or password recovery
- You can send user emails in HTML format
- You can enable users to set their own password upon registration
- You can require users to be approved or confirm e-mail address upon registration
- You can theme user profiles
WP-Members
WP-Members™ is a free membership management framework plugin for WordPress®. The plugin is used for restricting content to registered users.
Features:
- Block posts, pages, both, or none by default
- Block individual posts/pages
- Login/Registration is inline with content rather than the WP login page
- User registration and profile integrated into your theme
- Sidebar login widget
- Create custom registration fields
- Set which fields display and which are required
- Notify admin of new user registrations
- Hold new registrations for admin approval
- Automatically create post excerpts
- Show excerpt on pages/posts for better SEO
- Optional CAPTCHA for registration
- Action and filter hooks for extensibility
Peter’s Login Redirect
Redirect users to different locations after logging in and logging out. The plugin is user friendly allows you to easily define a set of redirect rules for specific users, users roles, users with specific capabilities, and a blanket rule for all other users. You can also set a redirect URL for post-registration etc.
Cimy User Extra Fields
Add some useful fields to registration and user’s info. Currently the plugin supports fields for text, textarea, textarea-rich, password, checkbox, radio, drop-down, picture, picture-url, registration-date, avatar, file, date. Some WordPress hidden fields can also be enabled during registration like password, first name, last name, nickname, website, Aim, Yahoo IM, Jabber/Google Talk, biographical info as by default these options are set from admin area profile page for each user. Other features include:
- reCAPTCHA
- image upload with crop/resize functions
- custom welcome email (non MS installations)
- custom registration logo (non MS installations)
- email confirmation (non MS installations)
- form confirmation (non MS installations)
- username equal to the email address (non MS installations)
- much more!
Pie Register
Custom Registration form, Custom Login Pages, Custom Profile Page, Invitation codes, Paypal, Email verification, user moderation & more.
You can make users register and login to your website before they start interacting. The plugin lets you use your logo and color scheme for better branding. Good for the website owners who want their customers to pay them for the service they provide. Yes, the plugin allows you to charge the users when they register with PayPal integration.
- Customised Registration Form and Login Page
- You can charge Users for Registration via PayPal
- You can enable Captcha validation, Email Verification or Admin Moderation
- You can create Custom Profile Pages
- Provides you Shortcodes & Widgets and more.
There are some more useful plugin and we have discussed about them earlier like New User Approve allows an administrator to approve a user before they are able to access and login to the blog. Another plugin called WangGuard provides you an advanced protection against sploggers and spam users registration. The plugin is fully compatible with WordPress,WordPress MU ,BuddyPress and bbPress.
Photo by NHS Confederation