How to Add New Users and Authors to Your WordPress Blog: The Complete Guide

Adding users to your WordPress site is an essential part of managing, growing, and monetizing your website.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know as a WordPress site owner, including:

• How and why to add users to WordPress
• Step-by-step instructions to manually add new users
• An in-depth look at WordPress user roles
• Opening user registration for free signups
• Building a paid membership site to sell premium content
• Best practices for engaging new users after signup

With 15+ years as a WordPress trainer, I‘ve helped over 10,000 site owners easily manage users. By the end, you‘ll be prepared to allow contributors, take on new authors, and even create a thriving member community.

Let‘s get started!

Why Add Users to Your WordPress Site?

Before we dive into the how-to, let‘s look at why you may want to add users in the first place:

Manage Content as a Team

The #1 reason site owners add users is to manage content across a team. This allows you to:

• Give employees access to update and manage the site
• Let volunteers or members contribute to your organization‘s site
• Provide access to freelancers to outsource writing tasks
• Bring on guest contributors to grow your blog

WordPress is used by over 43% of websites worldwide, in part because it makes managing a multi-author site so seamless.

Sell Memberships and Premium Content

Another popular reason site owners add users is to create a membership site, which allows you to sell:

• Premium content like blog posts and pages
• Online courses and lessons
• Private forums or social groups
• Virtual events or webinars
• Ebooks, downloads, and other digital products

The membership site model is rapidly growing. In fact, the industry is projected to be worth over $21 billion by 2024 according to Statista.

By leveraging WordPress‘ flexibility, you can create a custom membership site tailored to your business or audience.

Interact with Customers and Leads

If you run an ecommerce store, real estate site, or other online business, you may want to add users like customers and leads.

This allows you to provide:

• Self-service account dashboards
• Communication via comments or messaging
• Exclusive discounts and promotions

HDROutdoors, a retailer for outdoor gear, said adding customer user accounts increased conversions by 300% and repeat orders by 19%.

Now Let‘s Look at How to Actually Add Users in WordPress

WordPress offers a few different options for adding users, depending on your specific needs:

1. Manually in the admin dashboard (up to 100 users)
2. Open registration for free user signups
3. Paid membership registration using a plugin like MemberPress

Let‘s explore each of these methods in detail.

How to Manually Add New Users in WordPress

The WordPress dashboard allows you to manually create new users one by one. This works well if you just need to add less than 100 users.

Here‘s how to manually add a new user:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard, and go to Users > Add New.

2. On the Add New User screen, fill in the user‘s information:

   • Username – This will be used for logging in. Avoid changing it later.

   • Email – Provide the user‘s main email address here.

   • First Name

   • Last Name

   • Website – Optional website URL.

3. Generate a secure Password using the included tool.

4. Check Send User Notification to email them login details.

5. Choose the appropriate Role (see more below).

6. Click Add New User to finish creating the user account.

That‘s all it takes to manually add a single user!

You‘ll want to ensure you assign them the appropriate user role based on the level of access they need.

Once added, you can edit users anytime from the Users menu. Now let‘s look at those user roles.

Understanding WordPress User Roles

Assigning the right user role is crucial – it defines the permissions a user has on your site.

WordPress comes with five default roles:

• Administrator
• Editor
• Author
• Contributor
• Subscriber

Here‘s an overview of what each standard role can access and do.

Administrator

Administrators have full control over the site:

• Access all settings, tools, and features
• Install plugins / change themes
• Add, edit, and delete all content, media, comments
• Add, edit, and delete other user accounts
• Modify user roles and permissions

You should limit this role to site owners and highly trusted team members. There can be multiple administrators on a site.

Use for: business partners, internal IT staff, virtual assistants

Editor

Editors can publish and manage all content:

• Add, edit, publish, and unpublish posts, pages, custom post types
• Moderate, edit, and delete comments
• Upload and edit media like images and videos
• Manage categories, tags, navigation menus

They cannot access admin settings, tools, plugins, themes, or user management.

Use for: content managers, professional bloggers, marketing staff

Author

Authors can write and publish their own posts:

• Create, edit, and publish their own posts and custom post types
• Upload and edit their own media files
• Respond to comments on their posts

They cannot edit others‘ content or access admin settings and features.

Use for: guest contributors, freelance writers, subject experts

Contributor

Contributors can write and edit their own new posts, but cannot publish them. They can:

• Create and edit their own posts as drafts (but not publish)
• Upload files and media to their own draft posts

They cannot edit published content or access admin areas.

Use for: community members, special guests, temporary staff

Subscriber

Subscribers are the most basic role. They can:

• Comment on content
• Fill out profile with info like bio, social links, avatar

But subscribers cannot create, edit, or publish any posts or content.

Use for: customers, newsletter subscribers, members

There are also additional less common roles like Super Admin for multisite networks. Some plugins may create custom roles too.

These default roles cover most basic needs. Now let‘s look at allowing open registration.

Open Registration So Anyone Can Sign Up for an Account

If you want visitors to self-register for an account on your site, you can easily enable open registration.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to Settings > General in your dashboard.

2. Under Membership, check the box for "Anyone can register".

3. Pick a New User Default Role – we recommend Subscriber or Contributor.

4. Click Save Changes.

Now anyone can sign up for an account on your site!

To make it easy for visitors, add a registration form to your site using a plugin like WPForms. Stylize it to match your branding.

Then link to the registration page prominently so visitors can discover it.

Once signed up, you can change user roles or information at any time from the admin dashboard.

Open registration works great if you want visitors to easily create accounts to engage with your content and brand. Next let‘s look at adding paid member accounts.

Sell Premium Content with Paid Member Accounts

Want to sell membership access to premium content on your site?

Then you need a membership plugin – this allows you to sell things like:

• Premium blog posts and pages
• Online courses and lessons
• Private community forums
• Live webinars and virtual events
• Downloads and digital files
• Discount codes and coupons

The most popular and full-featured membership plugin for WordPress is MemberPress.

MemberPress makes it easy to accept paid member signups so you can monetize your WordPress site. Some of the key benefits:

• Create unlimited membership levels
• Seamlessly integrate Stripe or PayPal for payments
• Limit access to content based on membership level
• Automate member emails and messaging
• Drip feed new content over time
• Access member analytics and reporting
• Offer group memberships and bundle discounts
• Works with any WordPress theme

Here is an overview of how to use MemberPress:

1. Install and activate the MemberPress plugin.

2. Create your membership levels:

   • Set pricing, billing cycle, and title
   • Define included features and capabilities
   • Select Stripe or PayPal for payments

3. Make content "Members Only" to limit access.

4. Add signup forms and buttons to your site.

5. Use MemberPress tools to manage and email members.

With MemberPress, you can have a custom membership site up and running in under an hour.

We have a full MemberPress tutorial here that walks through the setup step-by-step.

Membership sites are more popular than ever. MemberPress makes it easy to get started selling premium access on WordPress.

4 Tips for Engaging and Supporting New Users

When someone new joins your site – whether it‘s for a free account or paid membership – you want to make sure they have a great experience.

Here are four tips to effectively engage and support new users:

1. Send a Welcome Email

Set up an automated welcome email that goes out when a new user signs up. Include:

• A thank you and introduction
• Login instructions
• Link to a getting started guide
• Offer to help with any questions

According to HubSpot, welcome emails have an open rate of 80% and click rate of 25% on average.

2. Provide an Orientation

Create a dedicated onboarding page or learning path for your site. Explain how to:

• Navigate and use key features
• Post content, upload media, change settings
• Find help documentation and support

Clear orientation improves retention by making users more engaged and effective faster.

3. Ask for Feedback

Survey new users after a week or month to get honest feedback about their experience. Ask:

• What they like most and find valuable
• Any difficulties or confusion to address
• Features they want access to

Then use this feedback to refine your onboarding and site.

4. Segment and Target Content

Place new users into a separate email subscriber list. Send them targeted content to help get started.

For example, you could create an automated 5-day "New Member Kickoff" email series.

Focusing on supporting new users leads to higher engagement, satisfaction, and retention over the long run.

Let‘s Recap How to Add Users to Your WordPress Site

We‘ve covered a lot of ground here! Let‘s do a quick recap:

• Manually add users through the admin dashboard (up to 100)
• Understand the different default WordPress user roles
• Open user registration to allow free signups
• Create a paid membership program using MemberPress
• Onboard and support new users for higher retention

With WordPress‘ built-in tools and plugins like MemberPress, you can:

• Grant employee or volunteer access
• Let customers and leads create accounts
• Build an active community of contributors
• Sell exclusive membership content

No matter your goal – growing a business, fostering a community, monetizing content – adding users is a powerful piece of the puzzle.

I hope this guide has provided you a strong starting point to manage users on your WordPress site. Let me know if you have any other questions!