In a normal WordPress blog, once a new user registers, the user is created in
the database. Then an email is sent to the new user with their login
credentials. Very simple. As it should be.
The New User Approve plugin changes up the registration process. When a user
registers for the blog, the user gets created and then an email gets sent to
the administrators of the site. An administrator then is expected to either
approve or deny the registration request. An email is then sent to the user
indicating whether they were approved or denied. If the user was approved,
the email will include the login credentials. Until a user is approved, the
user will not be able to login to the site.
Download
Latest version: Download New User Approve Plugin v1.2.6
Installation
- Upload new-user-approve to the wp-content/plugins directory
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
- No configuration necessary.
FAQ
Q. Why am I not getting the emails when a new user registers?
A. The New User Approve plugin uses the functions provided by WordPress to send
email. Make sure your host is setup correctly to send email if this happens.
Changelog
1.2.6
- fix for 3.1 to include the deprecated code for user search
1.2.5
- add french translation
1.2.4
- add greek translation
1.2.3
- add danish translation
1.2.2
- fix localization to work correctly
- add polish translation
1.2.1
- check for the existence of the login_header function to make compatible with functions that remove it
- added “Other Notes” page in readme.txt with localization information.
- added belarusian translation files
1.2
- add localization support
- add a changelog to readme.txt
- remove plugin constants that have been defined since 2.6
- correct the use of db prepare statements/use prepare on all SQL statements
- add wp_enqueue_style for the admin style sheet
1.1.3
- replace calls to esc_url() with clean_url() to make plugin compatible with versions less than 2.8
1.1.2
- fix the admin ui tab interface for 2.8
- add a link to the users profile in the admin interface
- fix bug when using email address to retrieve lost password
- show blog title correctly on login screen
- use get_option() instead of get_settings()
1.1.1
- fix approve/deny links
- fix formatting issue with email to admin to approve user
1.1
- correctly display error message if registration is empty
- add a link to the options page from the plugin dashboard
- clean up code
- style updates
- if a user is created through the admin interface, set the status as approved instead of pending
- add avatars to user management admin page
- improvements to SQL used
- verify the user does not already exist before the process is started
- add nonces to approve and deny actions
- temporary fix for pagination bug
I'm Josh Harrison, a freelance WordPress developer located in Seattle, WA. 
hi. Thanks for plugin
perfect.
Regards
I have been looking for a simple way to stop spam users registering and this plugin fits the bill perfectly.
Keep up the good work Josh!
This plugin is exactly what I have been looking for, but it doesn’t seem to work for me.
I have activated the plugin, but when I log out of my account I can still see the blog. I want people to get some sort of message asking them to log in or register, does this plugin offer that or do I need to set that option elsewhere?
Thanks so much for your help, and I like your BYU t-shirt!
@Justin you’ll need the Members Only plugin to handle keeping unregistered users out of your blog.
Very nice plugiin. Clean and smooth. Thx
I’m not getting my admin emails for some reason. Might be on my end anyway, but do you have any suggestions for things I could look at from the plugin side?
I will take a look at this over the weekend and update the plugin if necessary.
Many thanks! This is super helpful for my family blog.
MAtt
Hi Josh, thanks for the plugin. It is very useful. I would like to suggest a minor change in the plugin behavior.
If the user is created through the admin interface I think it is better to set his status as ‘approved’ instead of setting it as ‘pending’.
This because if a admin go to the “Approve new users” page he can see active users as ‘peding’ and then if he approves it the system will change the user’s password.
To achieve this I think that you only have to change the line 32.
What do you think?
Thanks, Rodrigo.
Hi again Josh, we been playing around with new user approve and I think we have found a bug.
In a fresh WordPress 2.7.1 install with New User Approve enable if the user submit an empty registration form it doesn’t get the message saying that the username and email fields are mandatory. Instead it receives the message saying “Registration successful.”.
I’ve send to you by email the patch we made to fix this.
Regards, Rodrigo.
Thanks for the patch Rodrigo. One reason I wanted to release this plugin was because of people like you. This is awesome!
Has a security hole?
Anyone can ask registration with an existing login.
‘New User Aprove’ don’t check this. On aproval get ID of the first row in users, reset his password an email a new one to intruder.
Please Josh, get my modified version at http://www.dsland.org/new-user-approve-modified.tar.gz, checkit and release a new version.
-check existing login
-update password query select by ID
Thanks Javier. I added your patch to 1.1
Hi Josh. Thank you for creating such plugin. I have a question though. When I got to approve a person, I get a page does not exist (404 not the one for WordPress). So I am not able to approve the person or deny them either. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Great and useful plugin. Thanks for fixing the approve/deny links.
One comment/suggestion:
It would be nice if the “Approve New Users” listing contained links to the user profiles (Username column). It is a trivial fix/patch and I do it myself in the plugin editor. The links to profile are needed for us because we have few extra fields in the registration form that need to be checked before approval.
One more thing – it would be really nice if all registration fields (including ((cimy or whatever)) extra fields) were sent to admin with the new user notification email.
Keep it up.
Hi, excelent post.
I found a bug. When you not remember your password, the wordpress can`t send password reset. I have wp2.7.1 and lost your password function is not workin with your plugin..
Thanks for finding this bug Max. I was able to recreate this bug when using your email address to retrieve your password. I have fixed it to work with either your email address or username in 1.1.2.
Hi Josh–
I love the plugin! I am having one problem, however.
When I register a new user, after I submit I come to a blank screen that says “Pending Approval”
I’d like to change that message a bit and at the least have my template stay on the screen.
Is there any way to apply this message to the body of my template?
Thanks
Lisa
Josh-
Trying to use this plugin with “Theme My Login,”
http://www.jfarthing.com/wordpress-plugins/theme-my-login-plugin
and am having an issue; your plugin is making a call to login_header, and it’s throwing an error – any graceful way to get a message to print to the screen?
Fatal error: Call to undefined function login_header() in /home/PATH-TO-WP/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 410
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers
I was looking for a plugin with exactly this function and it looks like it does exactly what I need. Thanks!
Feature request: currently nearly all of the strings of text used in the user messages, emails and admin interface are hard-coded into the plugin. I am planning on using this on non-English sites, so I will be translating the strings inside the plugin. However, this makes it pretty painful to upgrade the plugin in the future. My request is to make it easier to include translations, and persist them in between plugin upgrades.
Pingback: Translators Needed for New User Approve Plugin | Picklewagon
Hmm, OK here you go then:
line 275:
$edit = ‘<strong><a href=”$edit_link”>’ . $user->user_login . ‘</a></strong><br />’;
Shouldn’t it be:
$edit = ‘<strong><a href=”‘.$edit_link.’”>’ . $user->user_login . ‘</a></strong><br />’;
?
I’m having the same problem as Mike in September. I’d like to use it with the Theme My Login plugin but it’s giving a Call to undefined function login_header() error. It’s a custom theme, if there is anything I’m missing I need to add to my theme or edit let me know, I’d love to be able to use this plugin. Thanks.
Good news. I have added a fix to make the New User Plugin compatible with the Theme My Login plugin. The plugin author unfortunately removes the login_header function so I just check to see if the function exists before calling it. Check for it within the next few days.
Hi,
would you be so nice please and can you help me?
I’m using “Theme My Login” as a widget on the sidebar. It shows me the register link. Clik > Fill out the info > Register and then white blank screen with “http://mypagename.com/?action=register&instance=1″ In url. It sends the user email and administrator too but the blank screen…what I should change to get redirect to blog default url.
Thank you,
Julie
hello
this is a nice plugin but i am having problems with the localization. Actually, it doesnt work at all.
I have made the correct files for the greek language
(pw_new_user_approve-el_EL.mo and pw_new_user_approve-el_EL.po) and placed them under the localization folder.
Nothing is happening, front end messages and also admin messages are still in english. The greek language is correctly declared in wp-config.php as:
define (‘WPLANG’, ‘el’);
I think there is something wrong at line 37:
var $localizationDomain = “pw_new_user_approve”;
and line 68:
load_plugin_textdomain($this->localizationDomain, dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/localization’);
any help?
thank you in advance!
@Lefteris Thanks for pointing out the bug with the localization. I have fixed the code and released it under version 1.2.2. I would love to include your greek translation with the plugin. Let me know if you are interested.
First of all i want to thank you for your plug-in.
Now I need some help as I am very much new in Word-press. I have used your plug-in but after getting register, user are not getting the confirmation mail, I am using windows server,can you help me to solve this problem!
Thanks
Debajyoti
I successfully created polish traslation. I will send it to Josh Harrison. There was some problems with it.
First, the translation file must be renamed from “new_user_approve-….” to “pw_new_user_approve-….”
Second, I changed line 68 to
load_plugin_textdomain($this->localizationDomain, false, dirname(plugin_basename( __FILE__ )) . ‘/localization’);
Is there a way to customize the final email the user gets once they are approved?
I’ve opened up the source, but any change I make doesn’t make it to the final email. I’ve been messing with lines 376-371 in the new-user-approve.php file.
Am I missing something or messing with the wrong code altogether?
I will be adding a way to customize the plugin using both options and filters in a future version.
hello again
the changes suggested by Piotr Kubala solved my problems.
Does this:
Add option to customize admin notification email that gets sent when a new user registers
mean that you will be able to customize who gets the admin mail requesting a new user registration? Because I used this sweet plugin to set up a site for a friend but because I registered as the first admin it sends all the emails to me instead of her…
The latest release still have the same bug (see comment at January 4, 2010 at 5:17 pm)
This time on line 288:
Instead of — href=\”$edit_link\” —(dead link)
ir should be — href=\”".$edit_link.”\” — (correct link to profile)
Hello,
I’m having some issues when using “New User Approve” plugin in combination with “Ajax login” getting “Unknown registration response.”
How can this be fixed ?
Thank you,
Victor
Thank you this is very good.
Hi, great plugin.
I did translation to Lithuanian language lt_LT
translation can be downloaded from http://xawiers.esu.as/vertimai/
( direct download: http://xawiers.esu.as/download/28 )
Thanks.
I have translated and used your plugin for some time, but now I can no longer approve pending users. A get a white screen with a question that says something like “Are you sure that you want to do that?” There are no buttons or any other way to respond to this question. So I am stuck with pending users.
I recall that I saw this message some time ago when I wrote a plugin myself. If nonces were not set correctly, this question appeared.
I hope you can help me. I am using WP 2.9.2.
Hi, I am having a little trouble with my install of the plugin. I have the plugin installed alongside with buddypress, I’m not sure if that may be what is causing my problem, but every time a user signs up, my admin gets the email telling me a user has signed up, but the user also receives an email with an activation link etc. And once the user clicks that link they are straight away able to login and post comments etc.
When I look at the plugin’s section in wp-admin it appears the user has automatically been approved.
I don’t suppose anyone has any idea as to why this is happening, or any idea on how to solve the problem?
Thanks a lot
I am having the exact same problem with the exact same setup. Any solutions?
Hello
When I deny a user, he still have access to the blog.
Any idea why ?
I’m using latest version of the plugin
Thank you for your help
Hi,
I have a Dutch translation available for you. Check your mail.
Thanks for the good work!
Same issue here as @Pete – with buddypress installed, your plugin seems to have no effect …
What a shame, this would have been such a great and easy little helper!
hey I’m not getting the password emails. Any ideas?
Has anyone found a way to edit the “from” name and address of the emails this system sends out? On mine it uses wordpress@mydomain.com which looks quite unprofessional… Anyone?
I am looking for a way to change this as well? Have you found a solution?
P.S I managed to fix the wordpress@mydomain.com problem with a plugin called “Mail From” – but it’d be really nice to have this option built in to the plugin so the emails can be customised easier…
Many thanks
Jim
Hey there.
Having an issue mentioned above with the latest version of word press.
It takes me to the registration form however admin never gets the approval notification email.
I know this must be a stupid question, but, how do I see this? I have installed this plugin and, sure enough, it is there in my list of plugins and it shows as being “active” (the activivate option is not listed) in my list of plugins. But how do I actually see it? Is it not available until someone actually registers? This might be the problem, I guess.
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I have installed register plus and it works fine for my new registrations.
BUT i am not getting the new user notification messages.
I have turned on all that am supposed to turn on including the Custom User Email Notification.
what should i do? do i have to do some configuration in my wordpress files?
Hi. I get a lot of approvals every day. Currently, I have to click on each individual “approve” or “deny” link..
Can we have a “select” check box for each approval request, and a “bulk actions” dropdown with “approve” and “deny” options?
I could then check all the ones to deny, select “deny” and “apply”, and then do the same with the “approve” ones.
This would speed things up considerably, particularly if I’m using my smartphone.. two “submit” requests instead of 50..
Excellent plugin, by the way.
Hi. First of all I want to say thanks for a great little plugin.
Is there a way to fix it so ONLY approved users will be visible in the users list or A&U Extended list (I’m using Cimy Extra Fields)?
Trying to test your plugin. When a new user registers where should your plugin send them after registration? For me it goes to a plank page and nothing displays. Using wp3. Does that sound like normal behavior?
Hello,
I have a small problem… I think
When I click the Approve User link, the approved user gets sent two emails? I’m thinking when the page refreshes, it calls the function to send emails twice. Any ideas to fix this issue?
Thanks,
Damian
Did you get the issue fixed somehow?
I’m observing the same thing, the approval mail is sent twice.
I think this is what we are looking for? I need new users to register AND submit a phone number. Our site requires the administrator to call the user and then approve them.
If I add phone number using Register Plus can that field be added to the approval screen?
I have another idea to use WP Members which takes care of protecting the blog/pages and custom fields are added at registration, your plugin only adds the admin approval process.
Have you heard of other ways to handle the phone number then call then user approval?
I think this is what we are looking for? I need new users to register AND submit a phone number. Our site requires the administrator to call the user and then approve them.
If I add phone number using Register Plus can that field be added to the approval screen?
I have another idea to use WP Members which takes care of protecting the blog/pages and custom fields are added at registration, your plugin only adds the admin approval process.
Have you heard of other ways to handle the phone number then call then user approval?
Thanks for this very useful plugin!
I’m looking for a way to delete all the unapproved users without handpicking them in the wp-useradmin; thanks in advance for any hints.
This is a great idea, however the registration process isn’t working quite right. I have created ‘dummy’ accounts to test, and after I click “activate” on the dummy account’s email, I am able to go back and login without issue, no admin approval needed. When I look in the dashboard area, the dummy account shows as being approved WITHOUT admin approval. Please advise.
Pingback: Plugins Update October 2010
Hi, Josh. I’m having the same problem as Karl from last year. When I click on Users > Approve Users, I get a 404 error. It’s asking for this page string:
[domainname]wp-admin/users.php?page=new-user-approve.php
Any ideas? An otherwise lovely plugin.
Hello, apparently when an user is denied, he’s still added to the wp user list. Is there a way to automatically delete unapproved users ? thanks for your help.
@oliver: The plugin does add the user in case you want to approve them later.
hello josh tanks for your quick answer. regards.
Hi Josh,
Just a heads up that I installed your plugin on a 3.1 development blog and it’s not working. I had to replace wp_user_search in lines 485 and 488 to wp_user_query since wp_user_search has been deprecated.
However, on the Approve New Users page in the dashboard, I get this error:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /mysite/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 189
John Thanks for the bug report. I have been working on an update and will have it ready around the same time as the release of 3.1.
Just installed and activated the plugin, now my site is down with this error:
Fatal error: Class ‘WP_User_Search’ not found in /home6/jonshelt/public_html/mulberrycc/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 488
Any idea on what I need to edit in my code to get access again to my site?
Hea, Josh
Im working on a site at the minute using your quality plugin, ( Page Restrict for WordPress).
The problem im having is, I use the full WP levels of roles, admin, editor, author,
I want editors to be able to allow new users, that works sweet, ive set authors not to have this power i dont need this.
So all seems well until on of the cheeky editors denys my Admin account, for a laugh, and I had to get him to allow me and it sent me a new password, but i felt a bit annoyed that a sub-ordinate could deny me from the very site that I created for him.
So it there a way that you can add some Exception for admins, so other user levels can use the functionality of the plugin .e.g editors
While not allowing an editor account the power to deny a Admin account. please respond as you probably know from experience ive been 5+ hours on this issue searching forums etc. and brick wall has been hit!
If you Approve a new user, he will receive a new email with login and password.
Then…..If you Deny this same user, he will still have access to the website.
normal??
Is there a way to customize the email that goes to the approved user? I know I can do it in the php file, but when the plug in updates, that will over-write my changes.
Hi Josh,
just installed your “New User Approve Plugin” and did a german localization. Feel free to include it in your next release, you will find the files at my box.
Best regards & thanks!
Hello! Great plugin!
It appears to be broken with the release of WP 3.1. Any workarounds? Thanks!
I have the same problem as Gene!
Been using this wonderful Plugin for a very long time but suddenly, when I upgraded to WordPress 3.1 from 3.04 the Plugin caused untold nonsense.
Had to go delete the whole Plugin folder for new-user-approve under wp-content/plugins, then and only then was our web site able to appear at all. With the New User Approve plugin there was a fatal error, with the following message:
Fatal error: Class ‘WP_User_Search’ not found in /home1/rugbytal/public_html/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 488
Would be wonderful to get an update which sorts this problem out or a work-around to prevent the havoc?
Kindly mail me,
Much appreciated
Rudi Geldenhuys
The best thing you can do for now is just go to new-user-approve.php, line 486, and change
‘wp-admin/includes/user.php’
for
‘wp-admin/includes/deprecated.php’
(The class they use has deprecated and was moved there.)
…And wait for the update.
I have put in a fix. Download 1.2.6 to get it. Sorry about that.
@Josh
This fix ist not final. Did you change anything else than this line 486?
The plugin does not crash anymore with the update/fix.
Now, there is a bug, already in version 1.2.5: after the user has registered, a message is displayed, saying:
“Registration successful.”
“An email has been sent to the site administrator. The administrator will review the information that has been submitted and either approve or deny your request.”
Now I am using this plugin at a german domain, so I did a german .po and .mo file for the localization.
Now the first part of the message (“Registration successful.”) is replaced correctly, the second part is mixed up, i.e. “An email has been sent…”is not replaced, “You will receive…” ist replaced. See here for localization files and screenshots.
Why is that? Can someone confirm this (with another localization)?
This plug-in seems to be exactly what I’m looking for, but it does not work in WP 3.1 with BuddyPress. After registration the e-mail is sent directly to the user, so he can activate his account without an administrator reviewing it. Any ideas?
No BuddyPress support. Maybe next major version.
Hi there
This has been a great plugin and just what we needed but, after working fine yesterday, I am now getting the following message:
Fatal error: Class ‘WP_User_Search’ not found in /var/www/vhosts/ohta.ac.nz/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 488
This is on my wp-admin page, so I can’t get into the dashboard to change the code or anything.
Any ideas as to where I go from here? The site is kept on an external server and not as a local copy on my computer, so I have no access to the database, or none that I really want to be fiddling around with.
Cheers
Lara
Lara, You will need to upgrade to the latest version.
Thank you very much for this plugin !!
The only problem for me is due to the the french translation (seems to be an encoding problem).
“Après l’inscription, votre demande sera envoyée à l’administrateur “….”Pour être approuvé,”….
Best regards
Thanks for this plugin too !
I’ve the same problem that Odile (I’m french too).
Someone have an idea ?
Best regards
If I want to remove the WordPress logo that shows up after a user registers , how do I remove or even replace this with a custom logo? Thanks!
Hey Josh – Great plugin, works like a charm. I’ve run into a small glitch though, it sends some users 2 different passwords about 5 minutes apart. The original password will allow you to log into the site, but then another email shows up with another password, which resets the original one. Can get a little confusing for users… any thoughts?
I also am having this problem. All was well on 3.0, then I upgraded t0 3.1 and the problem started, upgraded to 3.1.1 and still have the same problem.
I am also seeing this problem, although the duplicate email is straight 1 second after the first. Running WordPress 3.0.5.
Looking at the plugin code, its not a problem there as I have commented out the wp_mail call and then receive no emails at all. Its as though the script is running twice in one pageload….
Hi there, I too am getting this problem as described above, the duplicate email with new password is 1 second or so after the first one. Did anyone have any luck with a fix? thanks.
I, too, am getting “Fatal error: Class ‘WP_User_Search’ not found in …/wp-content/plugins/new-user-approve/new-user-approve.php on line 488.” I’ve tried updated the plugin and deleting the plugin folder, and I’m still getting the error. I’m locked out of my site now. Can you recommend anything?
Hi there,
I have created new user using “wp_create_user” function, but the users is directly goes into the approved users list. Do you using any other method/function to create the new user? Or is there any hook to apply?
The registration have to goes thru manual developed form.
Does the plugin work with double opt-in? (confirmation of email address)
Can I add additional regsitration fields (for sending an invoice)?
The plugin currently does not ask for confirmation of email address. And no, no additional fields can be added using this plugin for registration.
hello,
is there a way to change the denaial email address “wordpress@…” to something custom?
thanks!
Did you already found a solution for this?
Hi.
For one of the blogs of my site, I have put that only registered users can comments.
Now for some reasons, I decided to give your plugin a try.
And despite activating your plugin, I find that its the user who is getting the approve email !
I guess you should check your plugin again.
thanks
Any fix?
How do I add the “Pending Users” to the list of available roles in Users.php? When I click on Users Link (under Users in admin page), I see the pending users are classified as subscribers. What I would like to happen is that for users that are pending, they will be classified user “Pending Users” and consequently, denied users will not be subscribers but “Denied Users”.
Thank you
One thing I have nothiced is that after a user registered they get left on a page telling them there requet will be forwarded to an admin who will get back to them.
What would be nice is a link back to the home page of the blog so they can continue browsing, I know I can add this myself but I think it would be a nice feature rather than leveing them on a page with no where to go.
Apart from that a perfect Plugin
cheers
Aaron
Awesome! However, there are some additional functions that I would like to see. I would like to personalize the message sent to the admin and the user. Also, if it can be integrated along with other plugins. I am currently using Pie Register to customize the registration process that includes a customized field and the users’ own password, however all that is lost after approving the user.
Also, I have noticed that denying a user does not actually work. The denied user is still added into the user list and is able to login and comment just as any other person.
I’m not sure if this is the case in your situation, but I had another plugin installed that allowed users to set their own password during registration. The way New User Approve works is that it prevents the default randomly generated password from being emailed to the user until an administrator approves them. If they set their own password, the administrator can deny the user and the plugin will not email them the password. However, since the user supplied their own password, they can still log in to the blog because they know their password. As the developer mentions somewhere above, the user is not removed from the database upon access denial because you may want to give them access again.
One possible remedy to this situation would be to cause the plugin to set a different randomly generated password when an administrator denies a user access. It wouldn’t matter if the original password was user supplied or randomly generated. I don’t see where this would cause any problem to blogs that don’t allow users to set their own password.
I’m not exactly sure when this started occurring, but the Admin UI for Approve New Users is no longer functional. Instead of seeing the three tabs with lists under them, all I see now are three stacked hyperlinks, Pending, Approved, and Denied. Clicking Pending does nothing. Clicking Approved pulls up the pending list, but when I click on a user it says “There are no users with a status of Denied.” I would really appreciate some help with this issue. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? I have another WordPress site on a different server and it is having this same issue as well. And yes, I have tested it using many different computers. Thanks!
Try Firefox.