You’ve built your WordPress site, you’ve been getting some traffic, you finally have an audience! Now you want to invite them to participate, to create deeper conversations, and to connect with each other.
The default WordPress user registration feature will enable you to do it, but what if you want to record more fields and make the registration form beautiful? Membership plugin is another option, but are you sure you want to spend hours learning a complicated plugin with tons of features you probably won’t use?
In this article, we will walk you through the process of setting up your registration, login, and update profile form using the User Management add-on. It’s simple and fast, covering all that you need for simple user registration on your site.
Set up your registration, login, and update profile form in minutes
The User Management add-on will give you three form templates that are ready to use, the WordPress user registration form, the login form, and the update profile form. You can build the forms from scratch with the User Management actions, or customize the template we’ve built for you.
Just make sure you have installed and activated the Ninja Forms plugin and the User Management add-on.
In your WordPress admin area, go to Ninja Forms > Add New. You’ll see these 3 form templates: Login Form, Register User, and Update Profile. How to set up each of these forms will be explained below.
Letting your users register with this one-click registration form template
To start, click the Register User template. You’ll get a form like this:
It already has the fields that you’d need to create a new user on WordPress: Username, First Name, Last Name, Email, Website, Password, and Confirm Password. You’re free to delete or add some fields, just remember that a WordPress user has to have a username, an email, and a password.
Next, take a look at the Emails & Actions tab.
The most important action here is the Register User, which maps the fields in your form submissions to WordPress’ User database.
Below each attribute, you can choose the corresponding fields from your form. For the last attribute, the Role, you get to choose the WordPress role that you want to assign for the new user.
In the Advanced settings of this action, you also have some more options to log in users after the registration, to refresh the page upon registration, and to email credentials to their email address (if you want the password to be randomly generated).
After you finish setting up the form, click Publish on the top right corner. Copy the shortcode of the form, and paste it on a new page for your custom registration page.
Letting your users log in with almost no setup
Like the Register User template, the User Login template has been built for you. Go to Ninja Forms > Add New, click the Login Form template.
Here’s what you’ll find in the form builder.
It’s as simple as a username field, a password field, and a submit button. Again, you can add and remove fields as needed.
When a user inputs the correct username and password, they will be logged in to your website.
Once you’re satisfied with the template and the actions, click Publish, then copy the shortcode into your new Login page.
Letting your users update their data
If you want to allow users to update their profile, use this template. It’s a copy of the registration form, but with the fields filled with the user’s details.
Go to Ninja Forms > Add New, choose the Update Profile template.
This is what you’ll get in the form builder.
Once you’re happy with how your form looks, just click Publish, and copy the form’s shortcode to a new page.
Can I add a custom field?
If you need additional fields in your Registration and Update Profile forms, you can use custom meta key.
Here’s how to do this:
- Add a new field on your Registration form.
- In the Emails & Actions tab, select the Register User action. Open the Advanced section.
- Under Custom Meta, click Add New, then add the name of the meta key (remember the key, you’ll need it for the Update Profile form) and the corresponding value (the new field from step 1).
- Repeat steps 1-3 in the Update Profile form.
Now your users can submit additional info upon registration, and edit them in the Update Profile form.
What else can I build with User Management add-on?
A simple user registration, login, and update will work with the forms we’ve built for you, but if you want to build something more complex than that, you can! Take a look at these advanced customizations and ‘mix-and-match’:
Want to make a members-only area?
When used with the add-on Restrict Content, you can create member portals with content that’s only available to logged-in members.
Want to make a paid members-only area?
Using any one of our payment add-ons (PayPal, Stripe, Elavon, Recurly) and the Restrict Content add-on, you can require payment for registration, and then build a paid member portal on your site. You can pop a Stripe, Recurly action on the registration form. If they don’t pay successfully, they won’t be registered.
Stripe and Recurly specifically allow for the use of recurring payment plans, so you can charge a monthly or annual subscription rate for member access.
Want to sell tiers of memberships?
The Register User action allows you to choose the WordPress user role that will be assigned (e.g. subscriber, contributor, author, etc). What if you want the memberships to be tiered?
- Add several Register User actions to the form, each set for a different user role
- Ask the user via a field on the form the “membership level” (i.e. the user role) they want to register as
- Put Conditional Logic on each Register User action telling it to fire only if the appropriate role/level has been selected in that field
- Charge different prices for membership at different levels
Want to manually approve the user?
If you’re creating a contributing author program or something similar that needs manual approval, use plugins like WP Approve User.
Want to add a custom role?
If you want to add a custom role other than the standard WordPress roles, use plugins like User Role Editor. If you have a custom role already, you don’t have to do anything, it will show up as one of the options in your Registration form.
Start involving users on your WordPress site with easy WordPress user registration!
You don’t have to be the only one talking on your website. You have the ability to create conversations, invite more people on your platform, and build a community. With the ready-to-use Registration, Login, and Update Profile forms, we’re sure you will get the community running in no time!
Comments are below… what other WordPress user registration features would you like to see?
haya morgenstern says:
Hi Quay. I want to convert a regular form to a User Registration form. Short of starting from scratch, is there a short and sweet way to duplicate my regular form into a User Registration form so that I don’t have to spend hours on recreating this multi-part form with a very elaborate conditional logic? Thanks!
Quay Morgan says:
Sure can! Just add a Register User action to your current form (or a duplicate of it). You’ll then just need to map the settings of the User Registration action to the fields of your form. You can find documentation on that here: https://ninjaforms.com/docs/user-registration-form/
Cheers,
Quay
Justine says:
Hi Quay. Will this add-on be combined with Save User Progress feature at some point?
Quay Morgan says:
Justine,
Hey! They won’t be “combined” per se, but you can use them together out of the box, no problem!
Cheers,
Quay
sue c says:
Register User Action not listing all user roles. Is there a function that can be used to add to the drop down list. (Woocommerce user roles are missing like customer and shop manager).
Quay Morgan says:
Sue,
Hey! We very recently added support for custom roles: https://ninjaforms.com/custom-role-support-user-management/
You should be able to do this now 🙂
Cheers,
Quay
Design says:
Can I add custom fields to the registration form with this, which types? Will the user be able to update profile information from the frontend? I would like to have the required woo commerce fields also in the registration form, is this possible? So it’s all entered in once?
Quay Morgan says:
Hey! Custom fields, most likely- check out the documentation in custom meta under the Advanced Settings section: https://ninjaforms.com/docs/user-management/
We can’t guarantee compatibility with Woo fields since we don’t have any official integration there yet, but you may be able to pull it off with the aforementioned custom meta depending on what exactly you’re trying to achieve.
Hope that gets you started in the right direction!
Cheers,
Quay
Rhys Fowler says:
Hello there,
Can you have two different levels of membership?
I would like to add a general login for users and then another login(with payment form) for business?
Thanks
Quay Morgan says:
Rhys,
Hey! It sounds like you’re wanting WordPress pages to be restricted based on membership level? Available to some and not to others? Unfortunately that would require a dedicated membership plugin. It’s something we’re looking into for User Management, but doesn’t exist at this time. Sorry.
Cheers,
Quay
Raghav says:
you can add remember me in user Registration in Ninja forms by mofifying this code
//logs user in if login user upon registration setting is in use.
if ( 1 == $action_settings[‘login_user_upon_registration’] ) {
wp_set_current_user( $user_id, $user_data[‘user_login’] );
wp_set_auth_cookie( $user_id, $remember = true );
do_action( ‘wp_login’, $user_data[‘user_login’], $user_id );
}
Umut says:
Is it possible to have a dropdown list of all the users, select one and send an email to that users mail?
Quay Morgan says:
Yes! Using the Conditional Logic add-on you can set specific email actions to fire based on the selection a user makes from a list.
mark says:
Hi,
This link is throwing a 404.
https://ninjaforms.com/docs/user-registration-form/
Thanks!
Quay Morgan says:
Thanks, updated w/ a redirect to current documentation on this 🙂
Sam says:
Hi,
Do you support payment gateways such as PayPal or Stripe during user registration? is it possible to use restrict content pro (rcp) membership plugin with Ninja forms to enhance the user experience?
Quay Morgan says:
Yep. Both the PayPal Express add-on and Stripe add-on give you a payment action that can be placed on the same form with the Register User action, and they can all be used together. RCPro is a great plugin we recommend in conjunction with User Management frequently also 🙂
David says:
Can you have a “Forgot Password” link? And then make that happen for a user?
Quay Morgan says:
Yes! Add an HTML field to your form and use the {user_management:password_reset} merge tag.
Areum Shin says:
can i make password strength requirement?
Quay Morgan says:
Not right now unfortunately, but this is something we’d like to see added in the future!
tarun says:
my client needs approval and rejects buttons on the saved database. i am using ninja form for database.the approve and reject buttons should we visible on the admin login page.so they can approve or reject on the web site. can u help? i what to show the buttons on their website in the admin database
Alex Johnson says:
Is it possible to upload a user profile pic (using ninja-upload-file) and have them update the pic in their “update user” page?
Christian Flores says:
Hey Alex – Were you able to figured this out? I’m facing the same use case.
Barry Karr says:
What happens if a potential user requests a username that is already taken? Or if they are registering for an account with an email address that already has an account that they forgot about?
Jess says:
Is it possible to assign a different user role to different people based on the options selected in the registration form?
Quay Morgan says:
Yes, you can set up a different registration action for each possible role, and fire one only based on the selection made using the Conditional Logic add-on: https://ninjaforms.com/extensions/conditional-logic/
Zack Esgar says:
We have event registration forms that we would like to be able to easily either log in an existing user or allow a new user to register. Thoughts on how we can easily do this?
Kathy Zant says:
Hi Zack. Thanks for asking. Using the user registration forms, you can have new users register with a username and password, and be immediately logged in as a subscriber by adding the login user action to the registration form. This will login the user upon successful registration. I hope this helps!
Mark Holland says:
Hi, firstly this works great and we’re using it to login users on our website. However, it doesn’t actually display an error message if a user enters the wrong username or password. It just reloads the page for them to try again.
We’ve had a few confused users stating the site ‘isn’t working’ because of this, when it turned out they were just using the wrong password to login.
Is there anyway to display an error message when they enter the wrong details?
Kathy Zant says:
Hi Mark, please do reach out for support so we can assist. Your site should be displaying error messages if the wrong password is supplied by a user, and an error message should display if the user does not exist or is entered incorrectly. You can reach support here: https://ninjaforms.com/contact/