Allowing User Registration in WordPress

When you are running a WordPress website, you may want to let people register or create their own profiles. This is important if you want to let visitors to your site create a community of subscribers and even contributors.

In this guide we will show you how to allow users to register for your WordPress site. When they register, they will be setup as a Subscriber by default. You can change the user’s permission level after they have registered, which will be covered in later tutorials.

How to Allow Users to Register

  1. Login to the Admin section of your WordPress
  2. Roll your mouse over the Settings link in the navigation menu, then click General.
  3. Click the check box next to Anyone can register.
  4. Now, click the drop-down box labeled Subscriber.

    You can choose a different default role here. By default, people that register are given Subscriber permissions. WordPress defines the roles as:
    Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
    Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
    Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
    Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
    Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.

  5. Click the Save Changes button. You will then see a message stating Settings saved.

Congratulations,now you know how to let users register for your WordPress site!

JB
John-Paul Briones Content Writer II

John-Paul is an Electronics Engineer that spent most of his career in IT. He has been a Technical Writer for InMotion since 2013.

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0 thoughts on “Allowing User Registration in WordPress

  1. Given the set needed for a  protected wp-admin environment, what can we do to allow spontaneoius registrations? Any such attempts now result in a request for the credentials to the wp-admin directory — which obviously they don’t know, so both our audience and us are losing out… 

    Quite sure we are not the only ones in this situation, and there has to be other means to get around this… What are others doing that circumvents this? Are we missing another option that would accomodate this?

    1. Hello Garrett,

      You may want to check into some plugins to see if they have features that will meet your needs. There are thousands out there, so odds are there will be one that is close to handling the ability to allow people to register without having too many bots get through.

      Kindest Regards,
      Scott M

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