How to Moderate New User Registrations in WordPress

On your WordPress website, you may have a registration form to register new users to register on your website. It can often lead to spam user registrations. 

In this article, we’ll show you how to moderate new user registrations in WordPress, so you can check and manually approve and deny new users.

Why Moderate New User Registrations in WordPress

WordPress provides us to open a website for new user registration. It allows users to create an account on our website.

Sometimes website owners require user registration to see premium content, download files, purchase product from an online store, and more.

You can default select a user role to assign for all new user registrations, such as the Subscriber role. It gives them specific permissions and capabilities on your website.

To have more control over what users can see and do on your website, you may check out the MemberPress plugin. The best WordPress membership plugin lets you quickly sell memberships and subscriptions on your website.

With the MemberPress plugin, you can sell courses, create a paid newsletter, and other premium content memberships of your website.

You can use the Easy Digital Downloads plugin if you’re looking to sell digital downloads like eBooks, music, software, and more.

If you want to sell physical products on your site, you may also desire to require user registration as part of your WooCommerce online store to store their shipping details.

Know How to Moderate New User Registrations in WordPress

You may need to be concerned about spam sign-ups while opening your website for new user registrations. 

Like spam comments, there are automated bots that look around for registration forms and fill them up.

You can use ReCaptcha and other methods to block spam user registrations. In that case, you may follow How To Add CAPTCHA Protection to WordPress to block spam user registration.

Luckily, there are two ways to prevent spam user registration through the user moderation queue.

Let’s look at how to moderate new user registrations in WordPress. Following these two methods, you can approve or deny sign-ups on your website.

• Moderate User Registrations in WordPress with Custom Registration Form
• Moderate User Registrations in WordPress with New User Approve (free)

Moderate User Registrations in WordPress with Custom Registration Form

Nowadays, there’s a trend to use a custom user registration form in WordPress among website owners. It allows them to customize the styling to match their brand needs, automatically add users to their email newsletter, and more.

In that case, you can check out the WPForms plugin. It is one of the best drag & drops WordPress form builders used by over 5 million websites, and it comes with a powerful User Registration addon.

The user registration addon allows you to create a custom WordPress user registration form and a custom WordPress login form. It also allows you to turn on Admin approval for new user registration.

WPForms integrates with all the popular email marketing services, so you can use it to add all users to your email list automatically. Besides, their free Uncanny Automator integration also enables further no-code workflow automation to help you reduce time.

If you’re not feeling comfortable with WPForm’s custom user registration form, then don’t worry. The following method will show how to moderate user registration for WooCommerce, MemberPress, and every other plugin.

Moderating User Registrations in WordPress with New User Approve

First, you must install and activate the free New User Approve plugin. To install the plugin go to WordPress DashBoard >> Plugins >> Add New.

Now search the New User Approve plugin, install and active the plugin quickly to move forward. 

This plugin enables moderation for all WordPress user registrations and is compatible with WooCommerce, MemberPress, LearnDash, BuddyPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and all other user registration plugins.

If you use the default WordPress user registration, users will have the following message on the registration form.

When they fill out the user registration form and submit it, they will be notified that their account is pending review. Users will get an email on their account telling them their registration is awaiting approval.

You will also get an email notification on your admin email address to approve or deny this user registration.

Approve or Deny User Registration in WordPress

Now it’s time to review the new user’s registration. The New User Approve plugin efficiently manages the moderation queue for user registrations.

Log in to your WordPress admin area to moderate the new user’s registration. Now click on the New User Approve menu item in the admin sidebar.

Here, you’ll see the list of user registrations awaiting moderation. Now you can go ahead to Approve or Deny the user registration.

After your moderation, the users will receive an email informing them whether their registration was approved or denied.

Then they will be able to log in to their account on your WordPress website.

Allow Specific Users to Bypass User Registration Moderation

The New User Approve plugin allows you to create invitation codes that a specific user can use to register on your website and bypass the moderation queue.

To set a specific invitation code, please go to the New User Approve » Invitation Code page and enter a code in the Add codes box.

There is a facility to set a usage limit for the invitation code and choose an expiry date.

Don’t forget to save your changes.

Next, you need to go to the Settings tab and turn on the toggle to allow user registration using the invitation link without moderation.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Now, you can give these invitation codes to users whom you trust. They will be able to skip the moderation queue and instantly register on your website.

Using User Moderation with Other Plugins

The New User Approve plugin only works with popular WordPress plugins for user registration and memberships. It will not show the custom notices on the user registration form. So, you’ll have to do that manually in your plugin settings.

For example, if you use WPForms, you’ll need to edit your user registration form. Inside the form builder, you need to switch to the Confirmations tab.

Here, you can set a custom message informing users that their account is pending review, and they will get an email when it is approved.

Similarly, if you are using MemberPress, then you can go to the Memberships page and edit one of your memberships.

Now, scroll down to the Membership Options section and check the box next to the  ‘Enable custom to thank you page message.’

Here, you can add your custom message informing users that their account status is pending approval.

You may need to repeat the process for other membership plans if required.

We hope this article helped you learn how to moderate new user registrations in WordPress. If you have any questions in your mind about this article, please feel free to share in the comment box. We’ll reply to you soon.   

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