WordPress has a feature that often goes unnoticed. If you’re a WordPress newbie, you probably haven’t heard of the user registration feature which allows website visitors to register to your WordPress site. When you enable this feature, your standard log-in page will include this tiny link inviting people to register:
But why should you even bother using this feature? Well, if you haven’t been using it, you’re not using the full potential of WordPress.
4 Compelling Benefits of Enabling User Registration
User registration makes accepting guest posts a whole lot easier for the blog owner.
If you’ve been receiving guest posts for your blog, you know that getting a guest post published is a long, drawn-out process. There’s a lot of back and forth via email between the blog owner and the guest blogger before the actual publication of the post.
But there is a better way. You can enable user registration and designate new users as contributors. You should publish a page with the guidelines for guest posting with a link to the WordPress registration page.
All the blogger has to do is register, write a post, and submit it for review. You will receive a notification so you can have a look at the post and decide whether to publish or reject it. It’s a lot simpler and easier, isn’t it?
It allows you to turn your website into a membership site.
WordPress lets you have premium content on your blog that only registered users can access. You can do this by designating certain users as contributors or subscribers.
You can set any post as private, but it will only be visible to people with either editor or admin roles. However, you can still offer premium content by creating a page template and adding this snippet of code within the template:
if ( current_user_can('read') ) { /* whatever a Subscriber can see */ }
Or you can simply use ProfileGrid plugin to turn your web site into a feature-rich membership site. It’s a free membership management framework for WordPress sites.
It allows you to offer bonuses so you can capture your visitors’ contact details.
As with a membership site, you can provide extras to registered users. You can give out discount codes or make special deals available to them. When you have their contact details, you can get in touch with them and send them content, promotions, and offers.
It helps you with your marketing efforts.
Why make people register to your WordPress site when you can simply use Mail Chimp, Aweber, or any other email marketing tool to capture email addresses? That’s a good question. Indeed, an email marketing tool takes care of capturing email addresses and automating your messages to your subscribers. But on the other hand, user registration allows you to get more interaction from your website visitors and helps them feel more connected to your site.
How to Allow Users to Register to Your WordPress Site
Enabling user registration is easy. Just follow this path: Admin Panel > Settings > General. On General Settings, you will find a checkbox labeled “Anyone Can Register.” Check that box to enable user registration. Below that check box, you will find a dropdown labeled “New User Default Role” which is set to subscriber by default.
If you’re going to allow your website visitors to register to your site, you need a high converting form on your registration page. Registration Magic is a WordPress plugin that lets you create beautiful forms that grab the attention of your target audience. To find out more, visit the Registration Magic website.
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