perdox | 
Sat 2 May 2009, 16:40:37 | Total posts: 293 | See all posts by - WordPress plugin: Register Plus
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This is the first in a series of posts I will write about plugins I have used in establishing my site. I hope to provide novice users of WordPress (WP) a quick reference guide for each plugin I have used. I will describe what the plugin does, and provide information about installation, documentation and any problems I encountered.
I hope to present this information in a clear and easily understandable manner for the novice. I will not, however, be reinventing the wheel by writing detailed installation instructions etc. I will simply provide links to where the information can be found. In this way, the prospective user will be able to decide whether they will find the plugin useful for their needs and if so, have an easy means for implementing it, or at least getting all the information required in one place.
If I can alleviate some of the frustration that I felt while starting out with WP, then I will have succeeded in achieving my goal. Please comment and let me know if you find the posts useful or if you have any suggestions for improvement.
What does it do?
This plugin allows you to customize the registration form. You can add your own fields, make them mandatory and much more. For a complete list of its features, click here. When a user registers, they receive an email with their details and so does the administrator of the site. It’s all automatic with no intervention by the administrator required.
Installation
I installed this plugin using the WP 2.7.1 Plugins installer. Select Plugins > Add New and enter Register Plus in the search field. Once activated, the plugin appears under the Settings tab with the name Register Plus. The plugin can also be downloaded from this page. Scroll down and you will see the download button.
Configuration
The following screenshots show the various configuration panels that appear once the plugin is activated.
Documentation
There isn’t any documentation as such. The configuration panels are pretty self-explanatory. I thought there was a lot more information to be found by clicking on the ‘More Information’ button on the downloads page, but you will see that all this does is take you back to the page with the blurb about the plugin.
Support
The support forum is located here. Unlike other plugin authors, you are able to contact this author via email. Not all authors do this and I thank the plugin author for allowing users to contact him/her directly. I just did, asking him/her to read this post and hopefully get back to me with solutions to the issues mentioned below.
Summary
The plugin is quite easy to use. Click here to see my registration form. I am using the Atahualpa theme and I was able to change the text, borders etc. through the use of CSS inserts.
Creating my own fields was easy, although I was not able to get the ‘Date Field’ option working. I wanted to have the user select their ‘Year of Birth’ and I thought that adding a date field would produce a drop down list that would start at 1920 (the setting I made in the ‘First Selectable Date’ field) but this was not the case. All I got was an empty field on the form with no hints given to the user as to the format of the date etc. I will be writing to the author about this and if he/she responds with a solution, I will update this post.
Another thing I don’t understand is the Auto Complete Queries section. This must be easy for seasoned users of WP but for me, being a novice, I just can’t figure out how to use this section. I suspect that I should be able to query the information I have gathered about my users (i.e. things like how many are male, female, country of residence) but I don’t know how to go about doing this. If you do know, please let us all know.
It would be great if I could use the users’ data to answer questions such as: how many users are male, which country do most of my users reside in, how many of my users are over the age of 30. Don’t get me wrong. The plugin might have these capabilities and its my limited knowledge that doesn’t allow me to access them.
I think this plugin is a must-have for your WP site. Please remember to leave a comment if you can help me and others understand the Date Field and the Auto Complete Queries sections.
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Well, I think the Auto Complete Queries section is used to be able to automatically enter the values on the field when the correct values for the registration page on the URL. An Example:
When I enter this to as URL:
http://theperdoxrant.com/wp-login.php?action=register&user_login=username&user_email=myemail@programmingforbeginners.iblogger.org&firstname=gel&lastname=beltran&website=http://programmingforbeginners.iblogger.org&gender=male&age=%3E50&city=city+name&state=Pangasinan&country=Philippines&year_of_birth=1905
it will automatically fill in the values on your registration form with my details. But it seems that the email and username isn’t filled up.
Thats what the feature is actually used for. With concern about the registered user, I could create a plugin for that but it basically is just a query to the database. I haven’t finished the template for my site, so after that, I’ll start with the simple query you need, if you still need it.