In this article, we will learn how to create new user in WordPress using custom coding. As a WordPress Developer, it’s a quite common task to add users using code at backend rather than registering it through the frontend.

Here I am sharing a handy code snippet which you can use to add user through coding easily in WordPress using email address only.

Code to create new user

// Firsty we check if email_address exists or not
 if(!username_exists( $email_address ) ) {

  // Generate the password for user
  $password = wp_generate_password( 14, false );

// Using wp_create_user to add new user using email and password
  $user_id = wp_create_user( $email_address, $password, $email_address );

  // Set the nickname for user to display when user is logged in. If you have name available you can set it as nickname
  wp_update_user(
    array(
      'ID'          =>    $user_id,
      'nickname'    =>    $email_address
    )
  );

  // Set the role for user
  $user = new WP_User( $user_id );

//Here we define role of User
  $user->set_role( 'subscriber' );

  // Email the user his new password
  wp_mail( $email_address, 'Welcome to Techyadda', 'Your Password to login on websie is : ' . $password );

}

WordPress Functions used for creating User

username_exists() : It checks whether username or email exists or not before we create new user

wp_generate_password() : It helps us to generate random password using wp_rand()

wp_create_user() : It helps us to generate new user using 3 parameters – username, password and email.

wp_update_user() : It helps us to update existing user and we use it to update nickname of user.

wp_update_user() : It helps us to update existing user and we use it to update nickname of user.

Where to use this Code

We can use above code in various ways but here I am explaining via simple example. Suppose we have custom post type students and we need user to be added automatically when we add new students post type. Here in example I am using ACF to enter email while adding students post type.

Now we want to add user when we save this student post type. For this we will use WordPress action ‘save_post’ which runs when post is saved.

//Add User when new student created
    add_action('save_post','save_post_callback');
function save_post_callback($post_id){
    global $post; 
//Here we check post type students and if it not students we return true and exit function
    if ($post->post_type != 'students'){
        return;
    }
    $email_address=get_field('email',$post_id);
    if( null == username_exists( $email_address ) ) {

  // Generate the password and create the user
  $password = wp_generate_password( 12, false );
  $user_id = wp_create_user( $email_address, $password, $email_address );

  // Set the nickname
  wp_update_user(
    array(
      'ID'          =>    $user_id,
      'nickname'    =>    $email_address
    )
  );

  // Set the role
  $user = new WP_User( $user_id );
  $user->set_role( 'student' );

  // Email the user
  wp_mail( $email_address, 'Welcome!', 'Your Password: ' . $password );

} // end if

I hope this helps you understand how to use this code now. If you have any doubts or need some customizations please comment and I will help you surely.