Customizing your WordPress registration page and login process is something that many WordPress site owners are interested in doing. The most commented posts and what I received many e-mails about are about that very topic.

On one of the threads in regard to a plugin that I no longer am able to recommend due to lack of support by its developer and it not being updated for WordPress 3.0, led to requests for me to make a replacement recommendation.

WordPressers are primarily asking for these three features:

1. A registration or login page that was not the default WordPress screen.
2. Ability to send customized e-mails in lieu of the default WordPress registration and password recovery e-mails.
3. Ability for users to set their own passwords.

And I’ve found a plugin, that after testing myself and found it quite nifty, I am comfortable in recommending to you that meets these three desires and then some!

Theme My Login WordPress Plugin

Theme My Login Features:

• Your registration, log in, and password recovery pages will all match the rest of your website
• Includes a customizable widget to login anywhere from your blog
• Redirect users upon log in and log out based upon their role
• Show gravatar to users who are logged in
• Assign custom links to users who are logged in based on their role
• Customize user emails for registration and/or password recovery
• Send user emails in HTML format
• Allow users to set their own password upon registration
• Require users to be approved or confirm e-mail address upon registration
• Theme user profiles

Theme My Login makes your WordPress registration/login page look just like it is part of your theme. And, you can customize the included CSS file for any additional enhancements you desire.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

At your service,
Judith

Theme Your WordPress Registration Page is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

Thanks to the tons of WordPress plugins there are all kinds of nifty special touches you can add to your Site/Blog to customize how it works and looks based on your unique needs and desires.

UPDATE 06/2010: With the important and comprehensive release of WordPress 3 this month, it is important to only use plugins where the developers are ensuring their plugins are compatible. The Register Plus plugin originally discussed and recommended in this article, is no longer recommended as it is not being updated or supported by it’s developer. It was last updated in 2008 and the developer’s page for the plugin is now 404ing.

So please review my follow up post on registration plugins that you can use instead by following the link below:

How to Trick Out Your Registration Page

Comments will therefore be closed for this post. If you want to discuss this topic or have questions, go to the post above.

I’ll also be doing a review of registration plugins and alternatives later this week, so subscribe to my Muse Alerts in the sidebar to your right!

At your service,
Judith

UPDATE: WordPress How To: Register Plus Plugin is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

You know what it’s like… You go to a search engine or Web site, find a link you are interested in, click on it and a “404 — Page Not Found” error page displays. You could have typo’d the URL or the page, post, directory has changed or is removed. Regardless the reason, you didn’t find what you were looking for. There you are staring at a blank visually boring unhelpful error page. Drat!

Two things then happen when this occurs on your site. You have ruined the user experience and have created a frustrated user right out the gate. You also then have a user that didn’t find what they were looking for.

What many then do is hit their back button to start their search over. Sometimes going back to the search engine they found your link on never to revisit again. Opportunity lost.

The thing is, as your site grows and takes on a life of its own, it is hard to track outbound links and page/post changes that could affect internal site linking. Outbound links go off-line, internal links change through the normal course of updating — it happens. The good news is you can easily solve this dilemma!

You can avoid 404 horror with three nifty plugins:

1. Smart 404: This plugin allows me to have a customized message and 404 page, that then makes suggestions to the user of possible substitute areas on my site. Helps to keep visitors engaged and on my site.
2. Redirection: This plugin manages 301 redirections, keeps track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.
3. Broken Link Checker: This plugin keeps tabs on any broken links on or off site to minimize users having to see your 404 page in the first place. When you login, on your Dashboard will be a notice of any broken links found allowing you to edit, delete or disregard.

I’ve had these three plugins in place on my site for over a year now and they really help save me a ton of time with my site housekeeping versus having to do all this manually.

Why not give these plugins a try and let me know how it works for you?

At your service,
Judith

WordPress How To: Avoid 404 Horror is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

Ever wonder how WordPress started and how it became a household word? Matt Mullenweg, the visionary and power behind the WordPress platform, gives an informational and entertaining overview in the video below. By watching the video you’ll get insights into the before, the now and what the future holds for WordPress.

Included are details in screen shots about the most recent comprehensive update to WordPress 3.0, codenamed “Thelonious”.

Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer considered “one of the giants of American music”.

When you watch the video, you’ll understand why that name was chosen.

WordPress 3.0 was downloaded 504,076 times as of yesterday. If you’re not yet on WordPress, what are you waiting for?

At your service,
Judith

WordPress: State of the Word 2010 is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...

The long awaited thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard).

“Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation. As a user, you will love the new lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click, and blah blah blah just watch the video. :) (In HD, if you can, so you can catch the Easter eggs.)”

You can view the complete list of improvements in WordPress 3.0 here. Before upgrading stop by your theme developer’s site to see if they are offering any updates to their themes due to the changes in 3.0. You’ll want to be sure to have the latest and greatest version of your theme that has been 3.0 tested available for installation.

Before you update we need to do a little housekeeping:

1. First save a copy of all your WordPress pages and posts to your hard drive. You do this by clicking on the Tools icon in the left sidebar and then Export. On the next screen click on Download Export File. You might want to create a new Folder on your hard drive where you keep all you Web site files. Name it WP Backup so you know to save all backup files for WP there (and you’ll know where to find them if you need them). It is a good idea to back up this file once a month anyway regardless if an update is needed.
2. Second, backup your WordPress database. There is a nifty plugin that makes this process a no brainer, WP-DBManager. This plugin is also a must have for repairing and optimizing your database (which you should be doing minimally monthly to keep things running smoothly).
3. To be safe, deactivate all plugins before upgrading.

Once you get the above tasks accomplished, follow the links in the nag bar (it’s called a nag because that yellow bar will be up there nagging you until you take care of the important issue noted) and update your site to the latest version of WordPress.

Then, don’t forget to reactivate and update your plugins. You’ll see with each WordPress update that plugin developers also update their plugins which you can also do with one click. You’ll see the now familiar yellow nag bar under the plugin name in the plugins area with a link to “upgrade automatically.”

If after the update you have theme issues, go to the Premium WordPress Theme site you purchased your theme from and download the latest version or check their support forums for assistance.

If you find after an update that something is not working as it was, go through the systematic process of deactivating your plugins one at a time until you find the culprit. If the developer has not updated his/her plugin to work with the lasted update, find another plugin whose developer is on top of these things.

If you are not on 3.0 you need to follow the above suggestions so your site is secured, up to date and you can take advantage of a bunch of new neato features!

At your service,
Judith

WordPress How To: Update to WordPress 3.0 is a post from: WordPress Consultant: Judith Kallos, At Your Service...