Saddled up your horses already? Let’s begin with…

Create Registration Form

Coming back to the most pertinent question – How to add a registration form to a frontend WordPress registration page? Once RegistrationMagic is installed and active, a new admin menu item will appear inside your WordPress dashboard, titled RegistrationMagic. This menu item allows you access to important internal features of RegistrationMagic. While there are multiple submenu items attached to it, the first and the most important one is the All Forms menu item, which will open automatically each time you click on RegistrationMagic menu item.

Quick Create Form (Option 1)

All Forms menu item is connected to the All Forms page which presents a card view of all the forms created using RegistrationMagic. When you first install RegistrationMagic, the forms view may look rather spartan, but it is designed to organize and manage hundreds of forms, if you ever wish to.

Notes that the view will look differently (below) if you have switched the view of ‘All Forms’ to ‘Cards View’ (optional). We recommend that you create your first form from the ‘List View’ screen, as shown above.

Please note, there will be a Login Form pinned at the beginning of the forms view; the Login Form cannot be deleted. Although using RegistrationMagic’s login form is optional, it allows you many advantages above a generic login form like high degree of configurability, security features, data logging etc.

For now, let us focus on creating forms.

On top left of the page, right beneath the page title All Forms, you will find a link to create a new form. Once you click on it, a popup will appear.

Once this popup appears, there are a few things you can do to personalize your upcoming form. Firstly, you must enter a name for your form, with which you can later easily identify the form. This guide assumes the form name is set to My Registration Form.

Secondly, right below the text box to enter form name, you can see an additional checkbox option Turn off user registration for this form. If you check this option, the form will not create WordPress user account for the users submitting this form. Checking it will also not add username and password fields to your form.

As soon as you click the Save and Close button, All Forms page will refresh and you will find a new form with the name you entered in the popup (My Registration Form in this case), right next to the Login Form.

As you can see, the minimum it takes to create a form is to set its name. But it will be a very bare-bone form with hardly any functional value. Therefore, you must add fields to it.

Create from Form Templates (Option 2)

Clicking on Start Now! under the section Looking for form templates? in the new form popup will redirect you to a questionnaire based form creation wizard which will help you configure essential form settings before finally saving it. Remember, these settings can also be changed later using the form dashboard. The major advantage of this method is an additional option to select a form template. This allows you to create a form populated with essential fields.

Add Form Fields

At the bottom of the form card on the All Forms card view, you can see couple of action items.

Here’s quick description of these action items and their purpose: Fields allow direct access to form’s Field Manager. You can modify form’s layout from this page. Dashboard redirects you to form’s overview page with access to form statistics and options.

Let’s click on the Fields action item to start adding fields to this form.

The Fields Manager screen shows all the fields that your form currently has. Since this is a new form, you’ll already have an Email field in it. The Email field exists on each form by default and cannot be removed. The Username and Password fields will also be there if it is a registration form you have created. To add more fields to the form, you can click on the Add Field button.

Clicking on the Add Field button will open a popup from where you can select the type of field that you wish to add to your form.

Click on any field type from this list and it’ll open the screen to set the properties of that field. Edit its properties as you like and then click Add to Form. This will then add the field to the form. Please note that all fields when added to a form are added within a row. So you can customize a row to contain up to 4 fields in a horizontal setup. To edit a row, hover your cursor over a field and three options will show up on top of it. Click on the cog icon to open up row settings.

Edit the row settings as you like from the Row Properties popup and the click on the Save button. Other important links to check on the Field Manager screen are the Design and Preview links. The Design screen will allow you to customize the look and feel of the form fields. The Preview link will show you a preview of the form’s appearance on site front-end, without actually publishing the form.

Now that you have fleshed out your form by adding fields, it is time to configure the form.

Configure the Form

You can configure the form from the Form Dashboard. Let’s revisit these optional features later.

Publish the Form

To publish the form on site front-end and make it live for users to register, you’ll need to add the form shortcode to a WordPress registration page. Just go back to the All Forms screen first by clicking on the button at the top left of the Fields Manager screen. On the form card for the form you have created, you’ll see the WordPress shortcode of the form. This will look like:

Copy and paste this shortcode into a WordPress registration page (or post) and publish it. Or, you can choose a form from the dropdown next to the Add Media button, which will add the shortcode for it automatically. Next, you need to add this page to a menu from Appearance -> Menus option from the WordPress Dashboard. The form will now show up on the WordPress registration page the you just created.

So, you have now created a new registration form, added fields to it, and published it on WordPress registration page front-end. That’s great progress! Your site visitors can now register on it with the use of this new registration form.

Although the process of creating a form and then publishing it is now complete, we recommend that you go ahead and have a look at Form Dashboard.

Form Dashboard

Clicking on the Dashboard link from the bottom of the form card, will take you to the Form Dashboard screen. This is where you can configure the settings of your form. Note that global configuration is done from the Global Settings (Left menu item). There are many widgets available on this screen, so let’s explore them one at a time.

Dashboard Widgets

1. Submissions over time: This is a chart showcasing stats of your form visits and actual form submissions. You can filter the results of this chart for specific time range using the Show data for dropdown option.
2. Status: This widget on the side shows the shortcode of the form, it’s visibility to the users, and the form’s creation date. You can also delete the form from this widget.
3. Content: Another one of the widgets on the side, this one shows the number of pages the form has, the number of fields, and the submit button’s label text. You can also duplicate the form from this widget.
4. Stats: In this widget, you can see the stats, such as number of form visits, form submissions, form attachments (only in premium version), conversion rate, and average time. You can also reset the stats from this widget.
5. Quick Toggles: To quickly toggle settings, such as auto WP registration and auto response, use this widget.

Dashboard Sections

6. Build: From this widget, you can visit the Fields Manager and the Design.
7. Configure: Multiple configuration settings are available from this widget. We encourage you to visit each of these configuration settings on your own. Description of what each option does on these configuration settings is explained next to the options themselves.
8. Integrate: From this widget, you can integrate your form with some of the most popular third-party services, such as MailChimp.
9. Publish: Use the settings under this widget to publish your form on the site front-end.
10. Manage: From this widget, you can access all form submission details in one place. As well as emails sent out to the users from RegistrationMagic.
11. Analyze: This widget gives you the options to view analytics for your form. Includes options such as form analytics and field analytics.
12. Automate: The settings under this widget allow you to create automated tasks for user accounts. Includes bulk emails too.

The Form Dashboard widgets are quickly accessible from the All Forms screen, from three dots (…) that are highlighted by hovering your cursor over a form card. (See ‘Build The Form’ section, First Image)

Closing Notes

Before signing off, please note that RegistrationMagic is organized into the following workflows:

Form Workflow: 1. Build 2. Configure 3. Publish
Data Workflow: 1. Manage 2. Analyze 3. Automate

All RegistrationMagic Shortcodes are available in the WordPress Registration Shortcodes list. This concludes our quick Starter Guide on how to create your first WordPress registration page.

The post RegistrationMagic Starter Guide appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

If you are also building user profiles, memberships, and groups for registered users, do check out comprehensive shortcode list for RegistrationMagic’s companion plugin ProfileGrid.

WordPress Registration Shortcodes List:

Above WordPress registration form shortcodes list is updated till release 5.2.0.2.

Version releases are shared with our users on Facebook page. Stay connected with us on Facebook. For more information regarding RegistrationMagic plugin or shortcodes like WordPress register shortcode, we suggest that you browse our guides and breakthrough ideas.

The post WordPress Registration Shortcodes List appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

Want to accept payments from your WordPress sites along with user registrations? You’ve come to the right place then. RegistrationMagic, already being the most acclaimed user registration plugin for WordPress, also allows you the flexibility to accept payments in addition to user account registrations. We have solely dedicated this guide to help users like you in setting up payments using RegistrationMagic. It is a simple three step process, described below. Follow along as we walk you through.

Step 1 – Payment Configuration

Before we do anything with the forms themselves, to start accepting payments, we’ll have to enable Payments from RegistrationMagic’s Global Settings screen. To reach the Payments settings, just click on the Global Settings link under the RegistrationMagic dashboard menu. On the Global Settings screen, you will see many categories of settings. Find and click on the Payments link.

From the Payments settings screen, you are allowed to configure multiple payment processors. But for the purpose of this guide, we are going to setup only PayPal. Once you have understood the method for stetting up PayPal, you can setup any other payment processors in similar way. Moving forward, please enable the checkbox next to the PayPal logo…

…and click on the adjoining configure link as well. Clicking on this link will open up a popup box which will require you to add your PayPal email address and set whether you want to enable test payments or not. Test payments are useful if your site, or form, is still in development stage and not live to the public yet. You can also setup any checkout page styles from this popup that you may have created from your PayPal account. A detailed description of all the settings on this screen can be viewed from our Knowledgebase here.

Step 2 – Create Product

Next step after configuring the global Payments settings is creating a Product.

Forms, by themselves, only act as an interface to accept payments. It is Products that do all the heavy lifting backstage to make payments really work with the forms. Therefore, you’ll first have to create a Product and then add that Product to any form(s) of your choice using the ‘Add Product’ form field. Letting Products handle payments also decouples it from individual forms, the benefit of which being that you get to use one Product for payments in as many forms as you want, as many times as you want. Payment configuration will not remain bound to any particular form.

Enough talk, you say? Let’s get to the action then. Proceed ahead by clicking on the ‘Products’ menu item under the RegistrationMagic dashboard menu. This will lead you to the Products screen. If you have no products created already, the default message on this screen will tell you what you need to do.

Assuming you haven’t created any Products already, just go ahead and click on the ‘New Product’ link at the top, just underneath the Products heading. Next up, you will now see a screen that will allow you to create a new Product. Use the help-texts on the right of each setting to know more about them. A detailed description of all the settings on this screen can be viewed from our Knowledgebase here.

After adding all the required details, click on the Save button to create the new Product. It will now appear in the all Products list.

Step 3 – Add Product to Form

After going through Steps 1 & 2, you must be fired up to accept payments from your RegistrationMagic forms. Well, keep your enthusiasm high as we are going to go through this last step fairly quickly. All you need to do is just add a new field to the form of your choice. To do this…

• Click on the ‘Fields’ link at the bottom of the form card from the all forms screen.

• Click on the ‘Add Field’ button inside any empty column in a row.

• Select the field as ‘Add Product’ field.

• Choose the Product you just created and click on the ‘Add to Form’ button.

The payment will now show up on the form once you publish it live using the form’s shortcode. You can also preview it on the front-end by clicking on the ‘Preview’ link on the Fields Manager screen.

Step 4 – Add Variable Quantities and Total Price to Form

This step is optional. If you are interested in following two features, follow this article: How to Add Variable Quantities and Total Price to Registration Form Payments

• Allow customers to choose ‘Variable Quantities’ for your Product fields
• Display ‘Total Price’ at the bottom of your form

Let us know if this guide was helpful or not by posting a comment below. Your feedback will be immensely valuable in helping us make RegistrationMagic even more productive and fun to use.

We’ll keep on adding more guides like this to assist RegistrationMagic users on their way to a more wholesome user registration experience. Till then, keep exploring the various other possibilities of RegistrationMagic on your own; we assure there are aplenty.

The post WordPress Payment Form Guide: Setup Payments on Registration Form appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

We hope that you are enjoying your experience with RegistrationMagic. We want to express our gratitude for your continuous support and enthusiasm, which has been the driving force behind our commitment to delivering the best user registration plugin possible.

In an effort to keep you informed about the latest developments and upcoming events, we have decided to utilize the comment section of this blog post. This will serve as a dedicated space where we can share important updates and exciting news about what lies ahead for RegistrationMagic. Whether it’s new features, improvements, or enhancements, we want you to be the first to know.

We invite you to participate in this discussion by replying to our comments. Your encouragement and support fuel our passion to keep innovating and refining RegistrationMagic to meet your needs effectively. We kindly request that any technical support queries be sent through our dedicated ‘Support’ page. This allows us to address your concerns in a more organized and timely manner, ensuring that every issue is given the attention it deserves.

Thank you once again for being part of the RegistrationMagic family. Let’s create something extraordinary together!

With warm regards,

Your RegistrationMagic Team

The post Experience the Unfolding Magic! appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

The post List of Guides for WordPress User Registration Process appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

The post Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress User Registration Forms appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

Now, I assume you are already familiar with RegistrationMagic and know how to build forms with it. If not, head over to our earlier blog posts. Once we have the form ready, we want it accessible on our website, linked to a menu item or a button for visibility. The shortest and simplest way to do is through shortcode. We’ll go through all the possible methods one by one.

1. The ShortCode Method

Each Registration form has a unique shortcode attached to it. All we need to do is, paste the shortcode inside a page, post, or a widget, where form is to be displayed. It can be above the content, below it, or anywhere in the middle.

Let’s say we created a form named “Demo Form”. If we open the Forms Manager and look on the bottom half of the form card, we’ll see a snippet of text like this:

The number in the code signifies the form ID. It is different for each form. So for the “Demo Form” for our shortcode. A shortcode starts and ends with a square bracket. It needs to be copied as a whole.

Moving along, let’s create a new page on our site called “Sign Up” and paste this code inside content editor. Now it will look like this:

Update the page and preview the changes. The form will start appearing on the page. And that’s all there is to it. Remember, here we created a new page, but we can also paste the code in an existing page or post. Just place it where you want the form to appear. It can be after, say, a couple of paragraphs.

2. The Quick ShortCode Method

Well, it’s the same method sans the first step. We can insert shortcode right from the page/ post editor (without needing to copy it first from the form card). All we have to remember is the name of the form which we want to show.

See a drop down above the content editor which says “Add Form”? Clicking on it will drop down a list of forms we have created so far.

Click on the form and corresponding shortcode will be automatically get pasted inside the content editor.

3. The Embed Method

This method to display registration forms on WordPress site is for advanced users and therefore only available in Gold Bundle of RegistrationMagic. It works best when we want to show a RegistrationMagic form where there’s no option to paste the shortcode. For example – a site outside our WordPress site! Yes, we can display form on any site using this method and the registration records will show as usual inside your RegistrationMagic dashboard area.

Let’s get back to form manager page, shall we?

Alright, now just below the shortcode is an underlined link named “Get form embed code”. Clicking on it pops up a translucent black box.

An embed code is a lot longer than the ‘short’ code since it will be carrying more information about the form to be displayed on the external page. For those familiar with HTML can easily adjust the size of the form by modifying this code. The format is <embed ….some code…. >

We need to copy all of it. For the demonstration here, I am going to paste this code inside a blank HTML page.

Opening the page in a browser displays this:

So, these were the best 3 ways to display registration forms on WordPress site. I am sure publishing forms will be a piece of cake for you after this. Join us for our next post on another interesting feature very soon.

(Update: Note that we recently launched a floating front end button, an innovative (4th) way to display registration forms on WordPress site)

The post How to display registration forms on WordPress site? appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

If you are already a user of our WordPress registration plugin, you maybe aware that it’s like a swissknife for managing user registrations on your WordPress site. Many of its feature sets (a.k.a extensions) work like toolkits which can be modified to serve any business or industry vertical. And once you combine power of these feature sets to match your workflows. It is then, you realize the full potential of RegistrationMagic plugin and our WordPress User Registration Status feature will only make things better.

By the way, it is completely fine if you wish to use RegistrationMagic for just filling up WordPress registration forms and it will shine as well as any other system out there. But its real power lies beyond that. For most businesses, submitting a form is start of a workflow and not the complete process in itself. You have people filling up your registration forms, now what? How do you take care of the next steps? Would you not love to have a system that take care of everything beyond the submission right there inside the WordPress dashboard itself? 

When it comes to taking care of complete WordPress user registration and form submission processes that extend beyond filling up forms, RegistrationMagic is a complete registration solution in itself. And even if you do not need everything it offers, you can be rest assured that it will scale with your business, if and when you need it. So you can pack and stow away your nightmare about switching to something else during peak season and hiring developers to migrate your form data. Let’s discuss how WordPress User Registration Status can help admins.

WordPress User Registration Status User Basics

One of the most important customizable extensions in RegistrationMagic is Custom WordPress User Registration Status. Custom Statuses fulfill following requirements:

1. Tagging or labeling form Submissions
2. Executing multiple actions on a submission with single click
3. Additional 4th level filtering option for submissions

Image: Default Custom WordPress User Registration Status screen

Apart from serving as handy labels or tags, each Custom WordPress User Registration Status can also have a set of action associated with it. Following actions are currently possible with every Status:

1. Remove an existing Status
2. Remove all existing Statuses
3. Send an Email to the user
4. Send an Email to the Admin
5. Create User Account
6. Delete User Account
7. Activate User Account
8. Deactivate User Account
9. Attach Private or User Note
10. Ban Email
11. Ban IP
12. Unblock Email
13. Unblock IP

Not all registration processes are simple accept or reject scenarios. There can be multi admin vetting, conditional approvals, temporary or permanent rejections etc. (Please note, RegistrationMagic already has you covered if you want to have automated vetting of submissions! – check out WordPress forms Automation guide.) To demonstrate power of WordPress Custom User Status, we will create an imaginary scenario. Once again, you may or may not need all the features; it’s totally up to you how and what you want to use. We keep adding features to RegistrationMagic to cover all possible scenarios. So here’s what will happen:

Scenario

1. User submits form 1
2. Admin 1 vets the form. Based on the outcome:
   1. Admin 1 Rejects the form.   
   2. OR Admin 1 Approves the form and asks user to fill another form.
3. User submits form 2
4. Admin 2 vets the form. Based on the outcome:
   1. Admin 2 rejects the form, deactivates user account and blocks user email.
   2. Approves the forms and activates user account.

Preliminaries:

We will create following properties in RegistrationMagic:

1. For Step 1: Sample Form 1
2. Step 2: Custom Status ‘First Rejection’ and ‘First Approval’
3. Step 3: Sample Form 2
4. Form Step 4: Custom Status ‘Final Rejection’ and ‘Final Approval’

Although, to keep things simple, we will create basic forms, you can use Custom WordPress User Registration Statuses with any type of forms. We shall also make sure that submission notification form Sample Form 1 goes to Admin 1 and for Sample Form 2 goes to Admin 2. Additionally, success messages and auto-responders for both forms should be set to inform users about the next steps.

To make sure user accounts are not active before Admin 1 vets and approves their submission, we’ll turn off Auto Approval. This is done from Global Settings in RegistrationMagic’s left menu:

In Global Settings, click User Accounts:

Now we select Deactivate User for Manual Approval in Account Activation Method option.

To set up specific email notification for both admins, we go to form Dashboard (by going back to All Forms link clicking Dashboard on form card) and click Global Overrides. Global Overrides allow us to set up form specific email notifications.

To set autoresponders for each form, we click Auto Responder icon in form dashboad.

Image: Autoresponder for Sample Form 1

To form submission success message, click Post Submission in form Dashboard:

Image: Success Message for Sample Form 1

We shall associate following actions with the Custom WordPress User Registration Statuses we create:

First Rejection:

1. Send an Email to the User informing him/ her about the rejection
2. Delete user account

First Approval:

1. Activate user account
2. Send an Email to the User with link to fill up next form

Final Rejection:

1. Send an Email to the User informing him/ her about the final rejection
2. Delete User account
3. Ban Email

Final Approval:

1. Send an Email to the user informing him/ her about the approval

Here’s how our Custom WordPress User Registration Status screen looks like now for both forms:

Image: Custom WordPress User Registration Statuses for Sample Form 1

Image: Custom WordPress User Registration Statuses for Sample Form 2

Now we have to do one more thing – we make sure the Sample Form 2 is only visible to the users who already have filled Sample Form 1 and are approved. Otherwise anyone with a link can fill up the form breaking the workflow. To do this, we go to the Sample Form 2’s Dashboard and click Limits. Turn on Limits and select Limit by Status(es). Select First Approval from the list. That’s it! All we have to do not is publish the forms.

Here’s the Demo workflow:

• User fills up and submits Sample Form 1.

• Form submits successfully and user sees success message.

• User receives email with acknowledgement link to check the form status on site (account not active yet.)

• Both Admins receive form submission notification.

• Admin 1 logs in and vets the form.

• Admin 1 marks the form submission for ‘First Approval’.

• User receives account activation email

• User visits the site and checks the form status online.

• Both admins receive emails that a form submission has been marked ‘First Approval’.

• User receives email with link to Sample Form 2.

• Next, User fills up and submits Same Form 2.

• User sees success message

• Admin 2 receives notification that a new form has been submitted.

• Admin 2 logs in and filters the forms marked ‘First Approval’.

• User receives email. Admin 2 vets the form and marks it ‘Final Approval’

• User receives email.

• Both admin receive email that a form has been marked ‘Final Approval’.

As you can see from this fairly simple demonstration that Custom WordPress User Registration Status provide a pretty solid framework to align form submissions and user registrations with your backoffice workflow. We have not yet touched all the feature available inside WordPress User Registration Status extension, or things that can be done in combination with other 50 odd extensions, including our advance WordPress user login plugin extension. This workflow can be branched and extended into multiple steps. Hopefully this provides ample hint of power hidden beneath many layers of RegistrationMagic. Until next time, and stay connected with us on Facebook!

The post WordPress User Registration Custom Status Guide appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

Look no more! We have it all covered for you. Starting from the basic questions like what is a WordPress frontend user profile, to how to add profile extra fields. Our WordPress experts have answered it all. Not only that, but we have also put together an easy guide to add user profile fields using WordPress forms. Let’s dig in and get started!

What are the Default WordPress User Profiles?

If you administer a user membership website, you must already know how barebones WordPress’ default user profiles are. Out of the box, you get a few basic WordPress profile fields that a user can only update by visiting the WordPress dashboard; an option many are not comfortable with. Sorely, a front-end profile editing system is conspicuous by its absence. Not to mention, the basic WordPress profile fields are a non-starter for any modern user profile foundation. And if that were not enough, adding to the misery, there’s no built-in system allowing you to add more user fields which are fundamental to any niche user-profiles website.

So how do you get yourself out of this bog? To be fair, it’s not that there is no system to build advance profiles within WordPress; On the contrary, there exists quite a robust structure under the hood to attach and maintain user data. It is called usermeta, short for WordPress User Metadata. All you need to know is some fancy bit of coding to unlock that. You can also use one of many available user meta plugins that can help you construct great looking profiles. Our very own — ProfileGrid is one such example, which not only empowers you to build any type of profiles but also adds user groups among other neat little things.

WordPress’s past as primarily a blogging tool

The default WordPress profile fields are stark reminders of WordPress’s past as primarily a blogging tool. It is still the core around which user profiles are built. Ergo, you cannot modify or remove these default fields. But WordPress offers APIs to attach as many data-fields to users, as you want.

It includes a set of functions to add, retrieve, and modify custom data to user accounts using usermeta key, value pairs. But creating a new usermeta key is not really synonymous with adding a new field to the user profile. Usermeta is used to store all kinds of information about a user which includes options only for admin’s eyes. For example, WordPress uses usermeta key wp capabilities to store access capabilities for a user. In short, user profile fields are just one of the things usermeta can be used for.

That is why you will need a user meta plugin that not only stores user profile fields as usermeta, but also retrieves and publishes them on the frontend as proper HTML. Since usermeta is WordPress’s preferred system for storing information about its users, it has added the advantage of being secure and egalitarian, when it comes to sharing data among plugins. If one plugin stores user information using usermeta, another plugin can easily retrieve and use it. Therefore, it was a no brainer for us when it came to deciding if RegistrationMagic should work with usermeta. The question was how.

WordPress Usermeta with RegistrationMagic forms

Since RegistrationMagic is a form-first system, we gave deep thought to how WordPress usermeta should work with our forms. From the very beginning, we wanted to display all the forms submitted by a user inside his or her profile in the admin area, but without actually going on to add every individual form field as usermeta. If we did that, you can imagine the commotion it would have wrought!

Honestly, it would not only create undue complications but adding all form fields to the user profile would be overkill as not all form fields make sense as part of user profiles. So, we decided to give you the power to store what you want as usermeta, and what to keep aside as clerical chaff. In fact, we decided to allow you to not only add a new usermeta but update the existing one created by one of your other plugins!

Adding an information table to default WordPress user pages

Let’s say you have a support form on your website powered by RegistrationMagic; and each time a user fills out that form, it’s fair to expect you would want it to automatically display inside his or her user profile in the admin area. So when you check out the user’s latest submission, you can also see quickly the past support requests by the same user.

RegistrationMagic achieves this by adding an information table to default WordPress user pages in the admin area where each table row corresponds to a form submission. This is a reasonably concise way of attaching multiple form entries to a single user page.

Now let’s assume your support form has a field which you want to be actually part of the user profile and update it every time user submits the form. This is where RegistrationMagic’s usermeta field mapping feature comes in. RegistrationMagic field mapping allows you to bind one of the fields of your RegistrationMagic form to a user usermeta key.

During the field creation process, you can select an existing usermeta key or create a new one and map it to the current field. You can also do this to multiple fields inside the same form. Whenever a user submits the form, all the fields mapped to usermeta will update the usermeta values from form values. As mentioned before, the form itself will be saved as a separate object inside the user page in a table, which can be downloaded or edited (Premium only feature) by the admin.

Let us have a closer look at this process:

Open RegistrationMagic in your dashboard and hover above the form card in which you wish to map a field(s) with usermeta. Click on the Fields button.

This will open a new page with the fields manager. Click on Add Field and select a field type from the popup. For sake of simplicity, we will select a plain text field. (If you plan on binding an existing field, please select Edit in front of that field.)

You will now reach the Field Options view. Click on Advanced Settings right at the bottom. It will expand into more settings.

Add Field to WordPress User Profile

In these newly visible settings, scroll down until you see Add Field to WordPress User Profile:

By default, Do not add will be selected. The next two options are — Associate with Existing WordPress User Meta Keys and Define New User Meta Key. Select, Associate with Existing User Meta Keys. This will introduce a new dropdown with searchable options. The dropdown lists all existing usermeta keys registered with WordPress on your site. Since there are technical limitations on the creation of usermeta keys (for example, there can be no spaces), they may look cryptic at first.

If you are not sure what a specific usermeta key does, just leave it alone. There’s a reason this option is hidden inside advance settings. We assume, at this stage, you are pretty sure which usermeta key you are looking for. Select it and save the field options.

Define your own (new) usermeta key

You can also define your own (new) usermeta key by selecting Define New User Meta Key. That will display a new text box:

You will be asked to name a new usermeta key which will be registered with WordPress upon saving. Usual restrictions on naming apply.

This is how you create or map existing usermeta keys to your RegistrationMagic Form fields. As stated before, you can map multiple fields inside a RegistrationMagic to multiple usermeta keys. This essentially means you can use RegistrationMagic forms to allow your website users to update their profiles created with another plugin. But using this method, you will also have the opportunity to add non-user WordPress profile fields (like a reason for updating) and turn each update into a report. Combine this with ProfileGrid and possibilities are endless. You can create single field forms to update specific fields, save forms inside ProfileGrid tabs, and more.

Important notes and things to take care of

But there are a few things you should always remember while using this process:

1. Be sure to check the expected values for the existing usermeta key. If another plugin expects the value to be a number, you have to bind it to the RegistrationMagic Number field and so on.
2. There are restrictions on how you name a new usermeta key.
3. Once a value is saved inside usermeta table, any other plugin can retrieve it.
4. A usermeta key is registered for all users and not for a single user. Although the value can be defined only for one.
5. Avoid mapping with usermeta key used by WordPress to store options unless you are completely sure what you are doing.
6. RegistrationMagic has an in-built system to display form data on the front end. But to convert it into a full-fledged profiles and membership system, you will need a plugin like ProfileGrid.
7. RegistrationMagic allows you to display a field from the form on the frontend user area without registering it as usermeta key. Use this for simpler scenarios to avoid adding unnecessary keys to your system.
8. Following keys are reserved for WordPress Core and cannot be used as part of usermeta system:
   1. user_login
   2. user_pass
   3. user_nicename
   4. user_email
   5. user_url
   6. user_registered
   7. user_activation_key
   8. user_status
   9. display_name

RegistrationMagic field types

Another important thing to remember — some RegistrationMagic user profile field types are pre-mapped to usermeta keys. Use them wherever possible instead of mapping to new generic field types. Pre-mapped fields are already configured to save and retrieve usermeta values in the most suitable format. These WordPress profile fields are:

RegistrationMagic Field Type	Mapped to (usermeta key)
First Name	first_name
Last Name	last_name
Biographical Info	description
Nickname	nickname
Website	user_url

A word about WooCommerce

A word about WooCommerce – like other native WordPress plugins, WooCommerce too uses usermeta system to store information about customers. RegistrationMagic has three Field Types pre-mapped to composite WooCommerce usermeta keys. It means the values from RegistrationMagic WooCommerce user profile fields will be interspersed to different WooCommerce usermeta keys automatically, billing phone number being an exception.

RegistrationMagic Field Type	Mapped to (usermeta key)
WooCommerce Billing Field	billing_last_name billing_company billing_address_1 billing_address_2 billing_city billing_state billing_postcode billing_country billing_email
WooCommerce Shipping Field	shipping_first_name shipping_last_name shipping_company shipping_address_1 shipping_address_2 shipping_city shipping_state shipping_postcode shipping_country
Billing Phone Number	billing_phone

We hope this guide to add user profile fields will bring you one step closer to becoming a WordPress power user. If we missed anything, or you want us to add new features to the RegistrationMagic usermeta mapping system, do not forget to let us know in the comment section.

The post How to add or update user profile fields using WordPress forms appeared first on RegistrationMagic.

RegistrationMagic is built from the ground up for creating and processing registration and login forms on a WordPress site. In addition to that, it offers a front-end private user area, for your site users to view (or edit if allowed), submitted forms, and other related information. But if you wish to take it a step further – to offer your registered users the option to build public or selectively public profiles, interact with fellow users, offer membership with content restrictions, etc. – RegistrationMagic has a free companion plugin, ProfileGrid, that does all this and more. When installed alongside RegistrationMagic, ProfileGrid serves as its dedicated extension, adding an extra dimension to RegistrationMagic’s WordPress User Profiles capabilities. Here’s a quick rundown of what you can do:

 

User Profile Pages

RegistrationMagic publishes a front-end user area using a special shortcode. Also, this is a private area, only accessible to currently logged in user. When you install ProfileGrid, its own user profile pages take over, and RegistrationMagic’s user area is neatly tucked into the private section of ProfileGrid’s beautifully rendered user profile pages. Moreover, all this happens automatically. It means you do not need to modify anything. ProfileGrid simply uses RegistrationMagic’s existing front-end shortcode and turns it into WordPress user profiles. Also, ProfileGrid even gives you the option to show/hide or rename RegistrationMagic’s user area tabs. To do this, just go to ProfileGrid—> Global Settings —> RegistrationMagic Integration

Profile Images

RegistrationMagic fetches user profile images from Gravatar – which is part of the WordPress family of services. But if the user does not have a Gravatar profile, it is replaced by a generic placeholder image. Too many of them and things can start looking a little drab. Moreover, being a user profile plugin first, ProfileGrid allows your users to upload their own profile and cover images. It Is a robust system where you can define upload sizes from the dashboard and set default images for both user profile and cover. Further, on the front-end, users can crop and pan their uploaded photos. These photos automatically show inside RegistrationMagic replacing Gravatar and placeholder images.

Content Restrictions

If you are planning to offer content based memberships to your users, ProfileGrid adds group registration based tiers and even allows users to submit and share content selectively. Also, this feature ties in with default WordPress posts and pages seamlessly allowing you granular content-based access.

User Activity Features

ProfileGrid comes with multiple user networking features like Friends System, In-Profile Notifications, Private Messaging, etc. Further, all these features become instantly available to your users through their revamped profile pages as soon as you install ProfileGrid.

Group Activities

User Groups

ProfileGrid uses a novel group-based user registration system. These groups offer powerful features for user management and moderation. If you are registering users for clubs, teams, factions, etc., these can prove quite handy. You even have the option to assign and label managers to each group who have a separate set of capabilities.

Of course, the integration is not one-sided. RegistrationMagic adds powerful features to ProfileGrid’s native system.

Related post: Integrate RegistrationMagic Registration Forms with ProfileGrid User Profiles

After exploring all the things possible with ProfileGrid, you will find rewarding new ways to use the combination to your advantage. Every site is unique in its own way. With the comprehensive ecosystem offered by RegistrationMagic and ProfileGrid, you can choose among many different ways to turn the key.

The post Boost RegistrationMagic User Profiles With ProfileGrid Integration appeared first on RegistrationMagic.