Fast and Easy Custom WordPress New User Registration

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May 31, 08

Normally when you register on a WordPress blog you enter in a Username and Email to register.

Then a password is auto-generated and emailed to you to verify your email.

Finally you can login to the blog but if you don’t change your password right then you’ll have to check the email again later when you forget it.

Maybe you have a secured site and you want to make registration a fool-proof process for your peeps? Read on.

Easier WordPress Registration

Instead of the safer and more secure method employed by WP, this article shows you the code that lets you create your own register form like the one below, and registration is as simple as typing in an email address and password.

Here’s how this script works:

1. Enter Email Addy and Password (Email used as username)
2. Hitting Submit creates a new user, emails user login info to user, logs in the user, and redirects the user wherever.

Bad Idea to implement, Cool to think about

For one thing this would let web robots and spammers register for your blog without having to validate an email address. That could get very bad very fast in terms of comments and other data in your database. But there are probably a lot of reasons why this would be a very bad idea to actually implement.

Register Form Example XHTML

PHP Script autologin.php

This is pretty rough code but it works for WP 2.5, some things to note are that adequate checking of user-input is missing so a blank password will work. Another bit of roughness is how this script will DIE with an error message upon failure.

It will also send a new user notification email including the plaintext username and plaintext password, then it will login the user and redirect them to /wordpress/.

<?php
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('../wp-blog-header.php');
require_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . '/registration.php');
if('POST' != $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'])die('not post');
$user_login = sanitize_user($_POST['email']);
$user_email=$_POST['email'];
$user_pass = $_POST['user_pass'];
$redirect_to = $_POST['redirect_to'];
if(username_exists( $user_login ) || !validate_username( $user_login ) || !is_email( $user_email ) || email_exists( $user_email ))die('error');
$user_id = wp_create_user( $user_login, $user_pass, $user_email );
if ( !$user_id )die('bad user_id');
wp_new_user_notification($user_id, $user_pass);
$credentials=array('remember'=>true,'user_login'=>$user_login,'user_password'=>$user_pass);
do_action_ref_array('wp_authenticate', array(&$credentials['user_login'], &$credentials['user_password']));
$user = wp_authenticate($credentials['user_login'], $credentials['user_password']);
wp_set_auth_cookie($user_id, $credentials['remember']);
do_action('wp_login', $credentials['user_login']);
wp_safe_redirect($redirect_to);
exit();
?>

Implementation

In case you want to try it out, it will work as is above.

This code is danger danger

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Reader Comments

1. J. Maideen says:June 24, 16h
   

   How about if you can add some more features such as:

   1) captcha before new user submit the registration

   2) choose as drop down menu either as subscriber, contributor, author or editor

   If previously we already set as (role manager plugin) default any new user as contributor, then, they already can instantly submit their articles/messages to the blogs.

   What you think man :)?

2. AskApache says:June 02, 11h
   

   Yeah that is exactly one of the reasons I started hacking it. I know WP has the functions to do that sure no problem, its just tough learning all these new functions.

   I’m sure its called wp_update_user or wp_insert_user or something like that. Just look around in the source code a bit.

3. Eystein says:June 02, 8h
   

   Can this be used to let allready logged in users change their password without entering the wp-admin area? I’m trying to use the wordpress functionality, with my own front-end design, to display only the change password form. I’m not getting very far with my own copy-pasting :S

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