Allowing New User Registration

As you can see in Table 4-1, each user level has a different set of capabili-
ties. In Book III, Chapter 3, we discuss the General Settings in the WordPress
Dashboard, in which you set the default role for users who register on your
Web site. Keep the default role set to Subscriber because when you open
registration to the public, you don’t always know who’s registering until
after they register — and you don’t want to arbitrarily hand out higher
levels of access to the settings of your Web site unless you know and trust
the user.
When users register on your Web site, you, as the Administrator, get an
e-mail notification (sent to the e-mail address you set on the General Settings
page), so you always know when new users register, and you can then go
into your Dashboard and edit the user to set his role any way you see fit.
New users can register on your site only after you enable the Anyone Can
Register option on the General Settings page within your Dashboard (Book
III, Chapter 3). If you don’t have it enabled, then users see a message on
the Registration page that tells them registration isn’t allowed.

By the way, the direct URL for registration on a blog that has registration
enabled is http://yourdomain.com/wp-register.php. With registra-
tion enabled (in the General Settings), a user sees a form inviting her to
input her desired username and e-mail address. After she does, she gets a confirmation notice in her inbox that includes an authorization link that she must click in order to authenticate her registration