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
Wondering how to create a login page on WordPress sites? Then you must be sold on the benefits:
- Improved branding
- Better user experience
- Enhanced security
You know what you need to do: customize the login and registration process. But how?
We’ll show you how a user registration tool can completely change any WordPress website's login and registration process. Using a simple (yet powerful) plugin, you can create a WordPress login form and system in just a few steps!
Get Better Forms FREE!
Ready to get started? Let's go — here are the main steps:
- Install and activate the user registration plugin
- Activate the user registration add-on
- Create a custom login form
- Create a custom registration form
- Customize the WordPress login and registration page
One thing before we get started: we're often asked, "Is it possible to create a WordPress login and registration page without a plugin?"
The answer is yes and no. Setting this up takes a ton of coding knowledge. Unless you're an experienced developer, we wouldn't recommend it.
And even if you are a pro developer, you'll love this method because it will save you so much time!
Step 1: Install and activate the user registration plugin
The first thing we need to do is install a user registration plugin for WordPress. This plugin will allow you to change your WordPress site's entire 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 alogin formanywhere on your site
- Add apassword reset formanywhere 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.
And if you find that Formidable Forms is the best option, you can try 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 take advantage of our user registration system, just visit our pricing page to get started.
Get User Registration on Your Site Now
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 toFormidable → Add-Onsand click the 'Install' button for the User Registration add-on.
Step 3: Create a custom login form
Before we can learn how to make login pages in WordPress, we need to 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 may want to 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, you don’t need to customize your login form to move forward with this tutorial. 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 theAdd newbutton. 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 be collecting user names, email addresses, and at least a few more pieces of 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. ClickRegister User to add a registration action to your form.
You can configure many options, which are highlighted in our user registration documentation. You’ll want to spend some time thinking about your users when you create your registration form, so don’t rush through this!
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:
- Branding:Usually your logo.
- Link to registration page: It’s usually a good idea to link users to your registration page if they have not yet registered.
- Login form:With Formidable, you only need to paste in your form shortcode.
- 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.
- 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!
Access your global settings by going toFormidable → Global Settings → Registration. That’s where you will see the settings for Global Pages. We can set our login, registration, and reset password pages here.
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 you can design the page to look however you like using the Gutenberg builder.
Now, you must repeat the same process for your registration page!
To be clear, your login and registration page are two separate pages. Although you could style them the same if you want. And you can insert your login and registration forms on any post or page you want.
Wrapping up
That’s it! You’ve created a powerful, custom user registration system for your WordPress website!
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.
And follow our social channels on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for more WordPress tips and tricks!
Get User Registration on Your Site Now
Read more from the Formidable blog
How To Create a WordPress Custom Login Page [Step by Step]Read More
How to Enable WordPress User Registration [2 Easy Methods!]Read More
How to Create a Custom Login Form in WordPressRead More
