How to Create WordPress User Accounts [5 Steps!]

Learn how to create WordPress user accounts step-by-step. Discover the best tips for managing users, assigning roles, and improving your site’s security.

Approximate read time: 7 minutes

Creating WordPress user accounts can be a headache, especially when managing a website.

Constantly adding users isn't only tedious. It's also an easy way to make errors. It'd be great if there were an easier way. Luckily, that only takes using a WordPress user registration plugin to simplify things.

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So, this post will show you how to create WordPress user accounts in a few simple steps. Whether a freelancer or a site owner, this guide will make it easy

Let's get started.

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User accounts are valuable for personalizing user experiences and improving website management. They allow for gated content, access control, and increased user engagement.
Formidable Forms simplifies the creation of user accounts in WordPress. Its User Registration add-on streamlines the process, from creating registration forms to managing user profiles.
Set up is easy with a few steps: Install Formidable Forms and the User Registration add-on, create necessary pages, build a registration form, add the Register User action, and publish your form.

Why user accounts are important for a WordPress website

Setting up WordPress user accounts has many benefits for you and site visitors.

Here are a few key reasons why they’re worth the effort:

Personalized experience: User accounts let visitors access gated content, track orders, and more. This makes your site more engaging and keeps people coming back.
Easier site management: Assigning roles and permissions to team members or contributors means you don’t have to manage everything manually. A huge time-saver.
Increased user engagement: Allowing users to create accounts encourages them to interact more — whether commenting, signing up, or contributing user-generated content.
Better access control: You can assign roles like editor, contributor, or subscriber to control who accesses certain parts of a site. This keeps everything organized and secure.

By setting up user accounts, you can improve visitors' experiences and make site management much easier.

Sites that benefit from a user registration form

Any site that has user-generated content benefits from user registration.

Generally speaking, the following types of sites should allow users to register themselves or sign up in some way:

Membership sites
Subscription-based sites
Sites with multiple writers and employees or accepting guest blog posts
eCommerce sites

Subscriber and member-based websites depend upon increasing numbers of members. That’s a given. But as we’ve seen above, nearly every website that wants to provide a better user experience, better-segmented marketing, or allow for user-generated content can benefit from adding user registration.

A word about guest blog contributions: we looked at the benefits of guest blogging.

With only a few guest contributors, it’s not a big deal for you to create user accounts on your WordPress site for them. If you have more than a few, however, you could save yourself time and provide a better experience for them by allowing guests to register themselves.

What can be done with user registration?

The Formidable Forms User Registration Add-On allows you to create user accounts on your WordPress site.

What you do with these user accounts depends on the website, but here are some things you can do with the add-on:

Add a login form to any page or widget on your site
Allow users to create their own accounts on your site with a sign-up registration form
Users can upload a profile pic or avatar.
Allow users to update their profile and change their password. (Note: Currently, users can’t change their usernames since WordPress doesn’t allow this by default, but they can change their password and other profile values.)
Confirm the user’s email address before registration is completed.

How to create WordPress user accounts

There are a few different ways to enable user registration.

If users will be added manually, you can use the default Users page in WordPress.

Go to the WordPress Users page and click the Add New user button. This page offers the option to set the email address, set the WordPress user roles, autogenerate the password, and send an email to the new user.

On the other hand, you can also let visitors create their own accounts.

The easiest way to do that is by using Formidable Forms, the most advanced WordPress form builder. It can be an entire user registration solution for any WordPress website, from building user registration forms to creating a login form and managing accounts.

Get Formidable Forms Pro!

The User Registration add-on is included in the Formidable Forms Pro Business plan, so grab Formidable Forms to get started.

Then, it's a few easy steps:

Install and activate Formidable Forms and the User Registration add-on
Create the required user account pages
Create a registration form
Add the Register User action
Publish the form on the website

Prefer video? Then check out the video below 👇

Step 1: Install and activate Formidable Forms and the User Registration add-on

Once you have Formidable Forms Pro, follow this guide to install and activate the plugin on a WordPress website, then confirm your license.

Next, go to Formidable → Add-Ons in the WordPress dashboard, find the User Registration add-on, and click Install.

Formidable Forms User Registration add-on with a red arrow pointing to the Install button

If you have trouble with this step, check out our helpful instructions in the docs.

Once that's activated, it's time to create a registration form.

Step 2: Create the required user account pages

For the user registration, there are a few pages you need to set up first:

So go to the Pages dashboard on the WordPress site and create three pages for each.

If you need help, check out our guide on creating a custom login page.

After, go to Formidable → Global Settings → Registration and set these pages under the Global Pages section.

Formidable Forms User Registration global pages section

For more information on setting up and selecting these pages, check out our docs.

Step 3: Create a registration form

To start creating a form, go to Formidable → Forms and click the Add New button.

Next, you have three options:

Create a blank form
Use a pre-built WordPress form template
Use the AI form builder

For our example, we'll create a blank form to design it from scratch.

Formidable Forms drag and drop form builder

You can add whatever fields you need, but Formidable Forms only requires an Email and User ID fields for user accounts. Adding other fields, like Name and Password fields, is not a bad idea, so users can log in and out easily.

Formidable Forms has a Simple User Registration Form template, which is great for getting up and running fast. These are the fields it includes:

Formidable Forms simple user registration form template

Feel free to customize the form to meet your needs. When you finish editing it, click the Save button and give it a name.

Step 4: Add the Register User action

Next, click the Settings button at the top of the form builder. Then, go to Actions & Notifications and find the Register User action.

A small tab appears below the Form Actions section (if you use the template, it's already there). Under the tab, there are a few options to customize the form action:

Connect the Email Address field under the User Email section, and do the same for the other fields you have in the form.

If your goal is to make it as easy as possible for a new user to immediately begin accessing content or functionality restricted to members, perhaps you’ll want to check the box Automatically log in users who submit this form.

Step 5: Publish the form on the website

The last step is to add the registration form to the registration page created in step two.

So go to that page and add a new WordPress block. Then, find the Formidable Forms block and add it.

The Formidable Forms block has a dropdown menu where you can choose the form you want to show. The registration form will automatically show. Then, you have to update the page, and everything is ready.

Stop registration spam

Now, you can easily set up user accounts on any WordPress site.

But one thing to look out for is registration spam. It can clog up an inbox and registration form entries.

So, check out our post on how to stop WordPress registration spam before it starts. And, if you're ready to get started, grab Formidable Forms Pro today to try it out risk-free for 14 days!

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