Set user role based on invitation code

Question

I'm working on a site where I'd like anyone to be able to sign up, but people who sign up with an invite code would automatically be promoted to a role with more privileges.

I'm aware that there are plugins that handle invite codes, but so far I haven't found any that will do quite this.

For my purposes, one invite code used by many people would work best. I'd be sending out the invite code to a mailing list, and I'm not that concerned about limiting access.

Answer 1

This is one way to do it

add_action('user_register', 'set_custom_default_role')
function set_custom_default_role($user_id) {
    // Maybe get available referral codes from database & compare them against the one available
    if(true) {
        $user = new WP_User( $user_id );
        $user->set_role('custom-role-slug');
    }
}

Answer 2

Try http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cm-invitation-codes/ Cm Invitation Code. You can combine it together with Whishlist Member and assign for each new user it's role based on his invitation code