User registration in WordPress

Banner for tutorial on how to manage user registration in WordPress

WordPress comes with a base built-in functionality for user registration to allow manage users in your site.

There might be various reasons to allow users create accounts in a WordPress site.

For instance, it can be useful for a membership site, forum based community, or just for posting comments in your blog articles.

In this article, you will learn how to manage user registration functionality in WordPress.

Allow user registration

In WordPress, you can use its native functionality to allow users create accounts on your site.

To enable user registrations:

  1. In dashboard, navigate to Settings → General.
  2. Locate Membership section.
  3. Check Anyone can register.
  4. Save your changes, using a button at the bottom of the page.
Preview of the General settings page, with a location of the option to enable user registration in WordPress.

After that, users will able to locate the Register link under the login form to register themselves as new users.

Important to note that open registration can lead to receiving suspicious user registrations.

In that case, you need to add additional layer of spam protection to your register form, using special plugins.

Disable user registration

If you do not want anyone registering on your site then you can disable the ability for users to register on your WordPress site.

To disable new user registrations: 

  1. In dashboard, go to Settings → General.
  2. Locate Anyone can register checkbox.
  3. Uncheck this option.
  4. Save your changes, using a button at the bottom of the page.

Once disabled, registration feature for new users will no longer available on your site.

Also, the Register link will no longer appear under the sign in form.

Conclusion

Having users register for your site is very simple, same as preventing users from creating a new account on the site.

WordPress has options for both cases.

Hopefully, this tutorial helped you to learn how to enable or disable user registration in WordPress.

What is your reason of using, or not using, user signup form in a WordPress site? Let me know in the comments below.


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