Have you ever struggled with the registration process for your website? Perhaps you use the default BuddyPress registration form and wonder if there are any alternatives. We have a plugin shop over at Skillful Plugins and one of the plugins we sell is an integration with BuddyPress and Restrict Content Pro. This is one of the most common questions we get.
Which registration form do I use? The one from BuddyPress or the one from Restrict Content Pro?
This is a great question and highlights one of the pain points with BuddyPress, the registration process.
If you are interested in reading more about using BuddyPress with a membership solution, check out our article on Getting Started with Paid BuddyPress Memberships.
You may be surprised to hear that there really isn’t anything special about the BuddyPress registration process. It just mimics the default WordPress registration functionality. So anyone who registers on your website will get a BuddyPress account no matter what method they use to register. In fact, if you are using the Profile Fields module for BuddyPress you may actually be losing new users because the registration page looks like this registration page (or worse).
You always want to make it as easy and painless as possible for your users to register for your site. If it’s too complicated or “buggy” then they’ll just leave.
So, in answer to the question above, you should use the registration form provided by the membership solution that you are using (Restrict Content Pro, Paid Memberships Pro, etc). Unlike the BuddyPress registration process they actually do have special information and functionality that they process on registration.
If you have extended profile fields that you’d like your user to fill out, then you can use BP Force Profile to require new users to complete their profiles before continuing.
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