How to prevent WordPress User Registration
I have been getting random (and suspicious) WordPress User Registration. When that happens, you will get an email notifying you. It is sent to your email address as specified in your site’s WordPress installation. The subject line will be something like “[your WordPress domain name] New User Registration”.
When I first noticed this, I was hopeful, puzzled, and fearful in equal measures.
Firstly, if you use Gmail, then it normally goes into your Spam folder (which I now know to check quite regularly).
You can also find these users in your WP (WordPress) Admin >> Users >> All Users
Now it may sound great that someones are registering to your site, especially for mine which is but a few days old. But it was very puzzling as I could not see where they could be registering from. There is no obvious Registration Form on my WP site and I have no idea what these people were registering for!
Then when I had a look at the Users in my Admin area, it all looked a bit suspicious to me. Don’t you think?
Possibly Suspicious New WordPress User Registrations
Is there anything to worry about when you get Unexpected WordPress User Registrations?
I googled this and apparently there is nothing too much to worry about. The default role is normally “Subscriber” which does not allow them to do anything much except set up their profiles. (None of my new users did.) It still me makes me wonder why anyone would bother.
How do people get to register at your WP site?
This must be some sort of WordPress legacy thing. Apparently anyone can get to your WordPress Login page by entering the following into their browser address bar:
www.yourdomain.com/wp-login.php
This is what they see. And it is the Register link that allows them to register themselves as new users to your site.
Where people can register to your WP site
How to prevent New WordPress Registrations?
Settings to prevent user registration to your WP site
To prevent this from happening:
And just make sure that “Anyone can register” is unchecked.
(You can see that you can also set the User Default Role should you ever want to take in registrations).
Now when someone accesses the login page, there will no longer be a “Register” link they can use.
Bye Bye suspicious new users!
Footnote: For those of you who DO want to have users register for some purpose, check out How to Create an Effective Registrations Page for WordPress Signup (from oneextrapixel.com)
Thank you very much! I had a member registration form with captcha etc… but spammers were running around it with this function! Thanks for pointing it out!
Great tip! I was annoyed with those pesky registrations. Everyday I had to take the time to delete them…until I found this most useful post. I thank you so very much from the bottom of my heart!
Thank you. Huge help and solved the mystery of the multiple unknown users registering on my site.
Hi Jeff, totally my pleasure. So glad to have been of help in solving the mystery of unknown users registering and how to disable that function. Cheers and thanks for dropping by!
I still get a few users even as there is no register form at wp-login.php?action=register. A lot less though.
As of 2019 this no longer works.
Spammers on my site simply use….
/wp-login.php?action=register
Even with ‘Anyone Can Register’ UNCHECKED the registration goes through.
Seems a bit stupid.
this no longer works. So all good now 🙂
Hello,
I continue to get new registrations, even though the “users can register” box is NOT checked.
I have an AWeber signup form on the site, but the registrations are not coming through that route.
Any ideas?
Hi Craig, sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you about the WordPress new registrations. If the new registrations are not coming via AWeber, do you know if they are coming via WP? I honestly have no idea at the moment where the new registrations could be coming from? Do you have other plugins that allow registrations?
Just what I was looking for, thanks.
Hi aggieaggie, thank you for your comments. Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. Big life transition and all that jazz. Glad to hear that the notes on how to disable WordPress User Registration has been useful 😀
This is the only post I came across that actually solved the problem I was having. Thank you so much for this information! I’ve already implemented it, now I hope to stop receiving those annoying (& very suspicious) email and user registrations.
Hi Kenishia, i am SO pleased that you found the steps on how to disable WordPress registration useful. And glad to hear you have now done it and can continue with producing great information for your lovely site 🙂
Hi John, thanks! I am so pleased that you found “How to Disable User Registration” in WordPress useful. I too found those emails very suspicious and unsettling. So much better when the user registration is turned off for those of us who have no need of that functionality. 🙂
Thanks, this is great. I was really tired of getting those emails… They are very suspicious indeed.
Hi there John! Glad to help get rid of some of those suspicious, unwanted registrations! Thank you for letting me know! 😀