Wondering how to select user roles at registration in WordPress? If yes, this guide is for you.
The simplest way to give various permissions and responsibilities to users on your WordPress website is by selecting a user role at registration.
For this, all you need is a registration form and the ability to select user roles for people registering through that form.
Don’t worry! Selecting a user role at registration becomes a walk in the park with the incredible registration form plugin like User Registration.
You’ll be able to create unlimited custom registration forms and select specific user roles for them all.
Want to know exactly how you can do this?
Well, we’ve put together this comprehensive tutorial on choosing WordPress user roles during registration for you. So, read ahead to learn all about it.
Why Assign User Roles with a Registration Form in WordPress?
WordPress user roles are crucial for deciding which user gets access to which part of your website.
For example, you can grant access to your website dashboard to admins, editors, and authors. On the other hand, contributors and subscribers are limited to interacting with the front end.
While WordPress allows you to set user roles for each user through their profile pages, it becomes tedious when you have hundreds of users registered on your site.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to just assign the user roles at registration?
This way, your users are automatically grouped into different user roles when they register through the front-end registration form on your site.
It’s much quicker, and you’re less likely to face errors than when giving each individual user a role one by one.
That’s why it’s important to have a user registration form that automatically assigns a user role to individuals as soon as they complete the registration process.
How to Select User Role at Registration in WordPress?
As mentioned before, you’ll need a registration form with the functionality to choose the user role.
Sure, you can make use of the default WordPress registration form and assign user roles through it. However, you’re bound to face limitations regarding customization and flexibility with the default form.
The User Registration plugin is the perfect solution for this since it lets you build a custom registration form and select user roles for it simultaneously. No need to waste your website resources on multiple plugins.
That’s why we’ll be showing you how to select a user role at registration using the User Registration plugin.
Let’s get started.
Step 1. Install and Activate the User Registration Plugin
Before anything else, you’ll need to install the User Registration plugin on your WordPress site.
To do that, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins >> Add New.
Type in “User Registration” in the search bar and hit enter.
When the plugin appears in the search results, click on the Install Now button.
After that, complete the installation process by choosing to Activate the plugin.
Step 2: Configure the User Registration Setup Wizard
Just after the plugin’s activation, you’ll see a welcome page.
Clicking on the Get Started button drives you through a series of plugin’s basic settings.
Though you can also skip to the dashboard, we suggest going through the setup process.
First is the Install Pages that automatically install essential pages like the Registration and My Account page along with a Default Registration Form for you.
So, click on Install & Proceed.
Next, is the General Settings page. From here, you can toggle on the button to allow anyone to register to your site.
Since you’ll be using User Registration to create and publish custom front-end registration forms for your site, you must allow users to register through them. Otherwise, they won’t be able to access these forms from your website.
Further, you’ll also find options like user login and prevent dashboard access to certain user roles.
Third is the Registration Settings page from where you can enable a strong password.
You can even choose a default user role right from the dropdown menus. This setting applies to all of your registration forms unless you assign a specific user role to your individual custom registration form.
Likewise, you can also customize your My Account page from the My Account Settings.
With this step done, you can now proceed to actually create a custom WordPress user registration form.
Alternatively, you also get the option to edit the default form if you don’t want to create a custom form from scratch.
For convenience, you can use the pre-built default form provided by the plugin upon installation.
Otherwise, you can follow the following steps for creating a custom form.
Step 3: Create a New Registration Form for Your WordPress Website
First of all, navigate to User Registration >> Add New.
This takes you to the Add New Form page where you’ll find several free and premium registration form templates along with the option to start from scratch.
You can also utilize the pre-built form templates to save your time and effort. However, for this guide, we’ll show you how to create a registration form from the ground.
So, click on the Start From Scratch option.
Then, enter a suitable form name and hit Continue.
Just after that, a beginner-friendly form builder opens up, where you can drag the required Fields from the left and drop them into the form on the right.
As you can see, the form on the right already comes with four essential fields; Username, User Email, User Password, and Confirm Password.
You can also add any other fields you need from Default User Fields and Extra Fields with the simple drag-and-drop process.
However, you may also need the WooCommerce Billing Address, WooCommerce Shipping Address, and Advanced Fields to create a custom WooCommerce registration form.
In that case, you must first purchase the premium version of this plugin.
Once you’re done, hit the Update form button at the top.
But we’re not done yet. You still need to customize the form fields as per your requirements. This can be easily achieved through the Field Options tab.
Just click on the field you want to edit, and its Field Options tab will open on the left. From the General Settings, you’ll be able to change the field Label, Description, Placeholder, and more.
While the Advanced Settings lets you add custom classes to the fields.
Some fields, such as Username, come with extra options like Limit Username Length and Allow Special Character in the Advanced Settings.
So, customize the fields to your heart’s content and click Update form when you’re done.
Step 4: Select WordPress User Role at Registration
With the custom registration form ready, you can now proceed to the most crucial step of the tutorial. And that is selecting a WordPress user role for users who register through the custom form you’ve just created.
For that, navigate to Form Settings >> General.
Here, you can find the Default User Role option on the right side. When you select the dropdown, you’ll see all the user roles available on your website.
So, choose one as you see fit, say, Subscriber. Now, all the users who register through this form will be assigned the Subscriber user role automatically.
Note that you cannot select multiple user roles for a single form. However, you can build numerous forms and select unique roles for each of them.
Besides selecting a user role, you can also set a user approval and login option, enable a strong password, enable Captcha support, change the success message position, and so on.
Thus, the powerful customization capabilities of User Registration will help you design incredible registration forms for your site.
Step 5: Publish the Registration Form on Your Website
Finally, you must add the registration form to your website to make it accessible to users. It’s pretty simple!
Simply copy the form shortcode from the top of the form builder.
Then, open the page or post you want to display the registration form. Now, add a shortcode block and paste the shortcode there.
You can also preview what the form looks like with the Preview icon near the Publish button.
After that, hit the Publish button. That’ll make the registration form with the ability to assign user roles go live on your site. And you’re all done!
Conclusion
Selecting a user role at registration is indeed a valuable feature for managing users on your website efficiently. It allows you to categorize users based on their intended roles or permissions within the site.
Fortunately, you don’t have to go through many complicated steps to do that when you have a plugin like User Registration.
All you need to do is create a custom registration form and select a user role for it. With that, users who register through the form will automatically be assigned the user role you’ve chosen.
However, that’s not all you can do with User Registration. Using its premium add-ons, you’ll be able to do so much more such as create multi-part forms and add conditional logic.
To learn more, you can visit User Registration’s official documentation page.
Also, visit our blog for more articles on the User Registration plugin if you’re interested.
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