How To Create a Login and Registration Page in WordPress

Want to create a custom login page in WordPress? Learn how a user registration tool can help you add a login and registration page to any WordPress site.

Approximate read time: 6.5 minutes

A website's branding is one of its most important design pieces.

While the default WordPress login and registration page looks fine—that's all it is. It doesn't match most websites' design and brand. So, if you're like most people, creating a login page in WordPress that matches the website is crucial.

And that's why we created this step-by-step guide.

This tutorial will show you how to create a login and registration page in WordPress in a few easy steps. We'll also show you examples of how others add login pages to WordPress to match their brand.

Let's get started.

How to create a login and registration page in WordPress

Step 1: Install and activate the user registration plugin

First, we must create a user login in WordPress and install a user registration plugin. This plugin will allow you to change your WordPress site's user registration and login process.

In this example, we'll use our WordPress form plugin, Formidable Forms. If you haven’t chosen a form-building plugin for your site yet, this one's a great option. Especially if you're hoping to handle user registration on your website.

Formidable has a dedicated user registration add-on that automates everything to do with users:

• Build custom registration forms with payments
• Allow users to register and edit their profiles
• Give users (and other user roles) the power to edit from the front end of your site
• Auto-populate forms with a logged-in user's information
• Add a login form anywhere on your site
• Add a password reset form anywhere on your site

Not just for user registration

Here’s the deal. If you need a solid user registration system, chances are you building a custom website. Our plugin was designed for those looking to make a secure and user-friendly site!

The best thing about Formidable Forms is that it isn’t just made for user registration. It’s a full-scale WordPress form builder, plus more. Formidable has dozens of integrations and add-ons, making it a powerful choice for almost any WordPress website.

A few free plugins can help you with user registration on WordPress sites, but as the old saying goes: you get what you pay for. That said, you can still read through this article to compare Formidable against other plugins out there.

If you find Formidable Forms the best option, try it risk-free for 14 days. If you don’t like it, we’ll give you all your money back, no problem.

Installing and activating the plugin is straightforward.

To use our user registration system, visit our pricing page.

Step 2: Activate the user registration add-on

Once you’ve installed Formidable Forms, everything becomes a lot easier. Go to your WordPress dashboard, then go to Formidable → Add-Ons and click the 'Install' button for the User Registration add-on.

Once it's activated, we'll use WordPress to create a login page.

Step 3: Create a custom login form

Before we add login and signup in WordPress, we must create a form from which users will log in. This form has already been created as part of the user registration add-on. That means that after users register, they can log in using this form—and everything works!

There are some things to consider when it comes to customizing your login form, though:

• Styling your login form: You can tweak how your login form looks using Formidable’s built-in visual styler—no CSS required!
• Create a reset password page: If any of your users lost their password, you can create a page and link your login form to that page seamlessly.

There are a few details involved in customizing your login form, so to keep this guide simple, we wrote a dedicated article here: How to create a custom login form in WordPress

However, to proceed with this tutorial, you don’t need to customize your login form. You'll need to add the login to a WordPress page.

So, let’s move on to the next step.

Step 4: Create a custom registration form

The WordPress user registration form is a lot like the login form in Formidable — it’s built into the user registration add-on. Since everybody will collect different data from their users when they register, we made an editable user registration template that users can get started with.

Here’s what it looks like:

If that’s close to what you are looking for, you can go to Formidable → Forms, then click the Add new button. Search for the User Registration template and click on it to start editing.

If you are feeling ambitious, you can create a form from scratch. To do that, click on the Blank Form option instead. Name your form and start building it using the drag and drop form builder.

All you need to do to build your registration form is drag and drop the form fields you want from the left column to the right. You’ll probably collect user names, email addresses, and at least a few more key info.

Configuring registration form settings

Once you’re done creating your form, click the update button, then proceed to the Settings tab.

To ensure your users register properly, you must enable the user registration options for your user registration form. This will connect your registration form to your user registration system.

Get started by going to Settings → Actions & Notifications. Click Register User to add a registration action to your form.

You can configure many options, which are highlighted in our user registration documentation. When you create your registration form, you’ll want to consider your users, so don’t rush!

You’ll want to configure what happens with your user after they submit their registration. For example, you can configure:

• Whether users should be logged in automatically after they register
• If you want to collect payment during the registration process
• Email notifications after registration
• User roles and permissions

You don’t need to have this 100% complete to move forward with this tutorial, though. Feel free to spend more time learning about online registration forms, and when you are ready, let’s keep going!

Step 5: Customize the WordPress login and registration page

Wondering how to customize the WordPress custom login page? Here’s where it all comes together!

The login page will replace the default login page that WordPress has baked in. Remember this?

That’s the one you are trying to get rid of, right? Let’s take a look at the Formidable login page as an example.

These are the basic components of a WordPress login page:

1. Branding: Usually your logo.
2. Link to registration page: If users have not yet registered, it’s usually a good idea to link them to your registration page.
3. Login form: With Formidable, you only need to paste in your form shortcode.
4. Forgot your password link: This is a link to the reset password page. You can include this with the login form automatically or insert the link yourself.
5. Copyright and other links: It’s generally good practice to include legal-info links on a page dealing with people’s data.

Creating a new login page

Many people want to know how to change the logo on the WordPress login page. Others still ask how to change the WordPress login page URL. But it’s much easier to create a whole new page.

And with Formidable, we don’t need to learn how to change the login page in WordPress because the user registration system automates the entire process!

You can access your global settings by going to Formidable → Global Settings → Registration. There, you will see the settings for Global Pages. Here, we can set up our login, registration, and reset password pages.

So, if you want to create your custom WordPress login page, create a page in WordPress like usual and publish your login form to that page. Then, using the Gutenberg builder, you can design the page to look however you like.

Now, you must repeat the same process for your registration page!

To be clear, your login and registration page are two separate pages. However, you could style them the same way if you want. And you can insert your login and registration forms on any post or page you want.

Ready to create a login and registration page?

That’s it! You’ve used WordPress to create a login for users. And you've set up a custom registration system!

Want to personalize things even further? Check out this knowledgebase article to learn how to let users edit their account page, allow for front-end editing, and more.

We hope this tutorial has helped you create the WordPress login and registration pages you envisioned. If you have more questions, feel free to ask our support team.

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