More than a few people have noticed that the login and registration pages for this blog looks like the rest of the site and aren’t the standard WordPress pages. As a result, I’m asked, frequently, how I did it.
My first suggestion is that you use a plugin; WordPress Custom Login is supposed to skin your WordPress registration, login, and lost password form without the need to modify any core files (which my method involves).
The newest version even allows you to customize registration e-mails that get sent out. Since there hasn’t been much mention on the site since the update to work with 2.0.x, I’m not sure if it is compatible with the most recent version of WordPress.
Of course, I needed a lot more control over my login page than the plugin provided (plus, my site existed long before the plugin existed ;)), so my login and registration forms are modified core files. In order to get the exact look and wording I wanted to appear on the those pages, I modified the wp-login.php and wp-register.php files manually.
If you embark on a similar journey, make sure that you always back up your files before making your changes, that you don’t accidentally modify any important code — stick to modifying the header/body/footer HTML — and, remember, if you decide to upgrade your installation of WordPress in the future, you’ll need to update those new files, too.
Could you articulate the way you approached modifying the wp-login.php and the wp-register.php files, especially if you have a side bar?
Thanks, Steve
# February 22nd, 2008
I did the same with my blog at:
http://www.untouchablesunderground.com/dojo/wp-login.php
It’s actually pretty easy.
There’s a line of code in the wp-login file that goes something like this: admin.css…
Look for that line and delete it.
And, replace with with a link to your site’s stylesheet.
Voila!!
You’ll notice your login will already look much more like your site. Then, as Teli said, just look for the header/body/footer/html inside all that code and play with it a little.
My approach was to make two copies of the wp-login file and use one as my back-up and just play around with the other one until I figure out what did what.
[EDIT: HTML code is stripped out by WordPress unless the brackets are properly escaped.]
You can play with those sections to add changes to each of the 3 parts of wp-login.
# June 15th, 2008