Let users register and show them a members only area (without plugin)

Question

I would like for users to be able to register using a form on the front end of the site to create them an account, after they've confirmed they will have access to a page only they can see, with their details and eventually things they've favourited.

I'm basically looking for a flexible way to allow member registration and management. No payment system is needed, although in the future this might be a possibility.

Can this be done without a plugin? I can't find any resources.

Thanks

Answer 1

I would say plugins are very easy way to handle membership until unless you want it for a small scale like for few pages/posts etc.

In that case you can register the level of users as per your requirements, assign capabilities and then on each page/post you can check if ( current_user_can() )

This can be a solution to manage to a small scale of things.

A small snippet for this will be

if ( current_user_can( $capability, $args ) ) {
    // The code for the page goes here
} else {
    // redirect to the home page or to some page telling the user he is not capable to see the page
} 

Reference to Current_user_can LINK

Answer 2

I don't think there's a simple way to do this with Wordpress out of the box. Of course you can do it without a plugin, but you would find yourself writing a ton of code.

As you say, there are plugins that accomplish account creation.

As for seeing a special page only they can see, that probably also requires custom code and/or a specialized plugin.

Hope that helps, I know it's probably not the answer you are looking for.