February 22, 2017: Updated "User activation" to "User is pending activation" due to Gravity Forms User Registration label change.
The Gravity Forms User Registration Add-on provides a really neat feature when registering new users; User Activation. When this feature is enabled, users will be sent an activation link to the email with which they registered. The user must click the activation link in order to activate their account and finish the registration process.
By default, Gravity Forms will send the WordPress default user activation email. This email is a good and generic but often times you’ll want to customize the activation email to be more relevant to the form from which the user registered.
This tutorial demonstrates how you can easily create your own custom user activation emails using the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-on v3.2 and the power of Gravity Forms notifications.
We’ve got you covered with Gravity Forms Better User Activation.
Steps
- Create your registration form.
- Create your registration feed with User Activation enabled.
- Create a User Activation notification.
1. Create your registration form.
We’re going to assume you already know how to create a form. If you want to use the specific form we’ve created for this tutorial, click the “Download Form Export” button below. After you’ve downloaded the form export, you can import this form via the Form > Import/Export in your WordPress admin menu.
2. Create your registration feed with User Activation enabled.
Again, we’re going to assume you already know how to create a registration feed with the Gravity Forms User Registration add-on. If not, check out the documentation. Here’s how we’ve configured our user registration feed.
There are two points to note about this configuration.
- Whatever Email field you map to the “Email Address” setting should be the same Email field you send the custom notification to in Step 3 (below).
Make sure you’ve enabled the “User Activation” setting and selected “manually” from the delivery method drop down which appears when the setting has been checked. The other option is “by email”.
While we do want to send the user activation notification by email, we don’t want to use the default email. Setting this option to “manually” will disable the default user activation email from being sent.
3. Create a User Activation notification.
We’re ready to create our custom user activation notification. There are a few steps to this process.
- Go to the “Notifications” tab on the “Form Settings” page.
- Click “Add New” on the Notifications List view to add a new notification.
- Set the “Event” setting to “User is pending activation”. This means this notification will be sent any time a new pending user activation is created.
- Set the “Sent To” setting to “Select a Field”.
- Set the “Send to Field” setting to the Email field that corresponds to the user’s registered email.
- Create your custom message in the “Message” setting and make sure to include the “{activation_url}” merge tag. This will generate the activation url which the user must click to activate their account.
Here’s what our notification looks like with each step indicated.
And here’s what that notification looks like when send to the user.
Gravity Forms Custom User Activation Notification — Sample EmailYou probably noticed there are quite a few notification events added by the Gravity Forms User Registration add-on. Here’s a quick breakdown on what they are and when they are triggered.
- Site is created: Send a notification when a site has been created via a User Registration feed. Only applicable to multisite installs.
- User activation: Send a notification after a user has submitted a User-Registration-enabled form. Provides support for the {activation_url} merge tag so the user can click the link to activate their registration.
- User is activated: Send a notification after the user has been successfully activated.
- User is registered: Send a notification after the user has been successfully registered. Remember that when a user is activated they are also registered.
- User is updated: Send a notification after the user has updated their profile data via a User-Registration-enabled form.
What questions do you still have?
Do you still have any questions about this process? We aim to be exhaustive in our coverage of Gravity Forms topics. Let us know if we missed something you want to know about in the comments below!
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Is there a method that will allow a user to self-initiate the Resend Activation Code email? This is a sticky wicket with some clients.
The issue when someone has previously attempted to create an account where they did not receive the activation email the first time for whatever reason seems to be a big issue with one of my clients. (a new user complained about not receiving the activation email – or it was delayed or caught in a spam filter) and a resend option would be great.
Looking for advice.
Thanks, John
Hi John,
GP Better User Activation doesn’t send the activation or manage it. This is powered by the User Registration add-on which is supported by Gravity Forms. You may want to check out their notification troubleshooting doc and also get in touch with their support team to see if they can help.:
Best,
Hope that helps!
How to customise nested form email template?
Hey Vignesh, Nested forms has it’s own templating that can be found here. 😃
How to change content of activation url ? I want to remove wordpress login.
Hello Faizan, Check out our article Customizing Gravity Forms User Registration Activation Page as that may be what you are looking for.
Is the Auto Generate Password for the Password Field doesn’t exist anymore? I don’t have that in mine. Or how could I enable that? I don’t want to send email. Thanks!
Hello Alex, That is strange. Have you checked on Gravity Forms documentation for the plugin found here? If no information there, I would reach out to their support here.
Hello, Thanks for your guideline. I did the same step by step but I received an email without HTML format? For example: I added an tag in the content of email: Click here But when receive it only ‘Click here’ (no tag) ?
Hello Truc, When you say that you added a tag that says click me, what tag did you add to your email? Was this a {activation URL} or is it just an HTML link? Let us know! Thanks.
Hi, is is it possible to include the password in the email? I tried it with {Passwort:4} where 4 is the id of my password field, but this does not work for me :/
Hello Katharina, After testing this one using the {Password:} merge tag, I was unable to recreate your issue. It looks to be working correctly. If you are still having issues after using the modifier this way, could you please drop us a support request. :)
Ok, I will try, thank you :)
I am having a devil of a time getting GF to actually register a user. I am using the {activation_url} tag and the notification form simply strips it out either in plain text or HTML. Ugh. Any thoughts? i am willing to pay for some help with this project. It will be the death of me yet.
Hello Joni, Just to verify, you do currently have Gravity Forms User Registration add-on activated on your account correct? Another thing to do is run a theme/conflict test to ensure nothing else is messing with your forms.
@Ryan:
I solved it early this morning. It was a setting in the PayPal module notifications/events which was set to be true only when payment is completed. Because I am still testing things in the site, I needed to change that setting to Upon Form Submission. Works like a charm now.
Hey Joni, Awesome! Happy that this was something local and not a bigger issue. 😃 Let us know if you have any other questions.
This is working wonderfully–love it. Thank you.
I do have a question in regard to pending activations functionality—is there any sort of reminder notification/report functionality?
We have the activation emails getting sent to a distribution list and I’ve noticed that there tends to get a build up of users every few weeks. I am hoping there is some way to send out a report with the Activate/Delete link options for and pending activation.
Hey Carlos, we don’t have a solution for this one…
Hi,
Great guide! The only problem I’m having is, that the basic activation email is still sent by WordPress. So the user gets my custom one, as above, AND the basic WordPress one. Is there a way to supress the generic one?
Cheers, Oliver
Are you on a multi-site or single-site install?
I’m also having this issue. I’m not in multi-site
Hello there,
Are you still having an issue with two emails being sent out? If so, could you please drop us a support request for this? We would be more than happy to help you out with this one. :)
Hello, how can I modify the page and the user? I am looking forward to your response. Thank you
I have a small doubt, how can i send a resend activation mail to the users without login
Assuming they entered their pending account email on the entry, you could a) create a custom activation email and b) resend that via Gravity Forms Resend Notifications feature.
Hola. La verdad es que me parece muy completa la información, muy detallada y completa pero tengo una pregunta los usuarios que sean aceptados manualmente es posible que reciban un correo electrónico con credenciales de inicio de sesión?
how do we set the user activated e-mail? Once the link is selected, it sends the user a horrible message without proper links and formatting?
Do you mean the email or the page? This tutorial demonstrates how to modify the email. If you’re looking to modify the User Activation page, check out our plugin: https://gravitywiz.com/documentation/gravity-forms-better-user-activation/
Hello, is there a way to include the user passwords in a notification mail after the user has been imported? I would like to send the login credentials to the user by mail after import . It would be great if this would be possible more than once. Kind Regards Jens
Hi Jens, what do you mean “after import”?
This worked great for me, but I’m finding that something else in WordPress is also sending an Activation email.
Where should I look to disable that other notification from going out?
I think I’ve got this sorted now.
I had the “Enable User Activation” set to send the email. Testing now to confirm.
Once I can get the issue with the custom Activation page fixed, I’m good to go live.
One final follow up question:
If I set this up but set the Notification to go when the “User is Activated”, will that override the default “New User Info” email WordPress sends out?
My gut says now, but figured I’d ask.
Is there anyway to have admin side registration approval, after which the registration has been approved, the user is sent a username/password?
Set the activation type to manual. You can then configure a notification for the “User is activated” event (screenshot). That will be sent whenever you manually approve the user via the Pending Activations UI (provided by GF User Registration).
I have the same question. I’d like for the users to be manually approved then receive email with login credentials. Possible?
Hi, interesting – but how do you get the Username and Password in an email instead of the activation page? After they automatically are logged in (via GravityPerks-addon)
The shortcodes Username + Password don’t seem to work when I add them directly in a GF notification mail…
Anybody know how to fix this?
Thanks, Rich.
Hello,
Is there a way to change the sender email address of the activation email? as a side note, I’m using amazon SES to send the email
If the “From” setting is not being set correctly, I’d reach out to Gravity Forms support on this one.
Thank you for trying to help me, but I am afraid I do not understand. However here is what I Iave found about the problem:
It works with the event; User is Pending Activation, BUT not with the event; User is Activated. You can see there are other peple with same problem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fElpXGdzsg
regards Johannes
Hi, It works with the event; User is Pending Activation, BUT not with the event; User is Activated. Other with same problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fElpXGdzsg
regards Johannes
David, I am afraid to say what you tell us about using the field id for sending the password does not work. HOWEVER if you use a standart text field in the form and use the “enable password input” in advanced tab your explaination works…
Do you know how to fix this using the standart password file?
Hi Johannes, can you refresh my memory on my previous recommendation?
Hi David, It was regarding manuall user activation and password in notification.
You wrote: “It won’t appear for selection; however, it can be manually entered. All you need is the field ID: {:3}. If you want to add a label so you remember what it is that won’t impact anything: {Password:3}”
This solution does not work anymore. I thaught it could be done using a single text field and “Enable Password Input” function but the user registation feed settings does not allow that.
So now if I will use a custom GF notification on manuell user activation I must use the wp email also. Do you know a place to customice it? ( the standrd wp mail )
regards Johannes
If you want to make other field types available for selection in the Password setting on the User Registration setting, you can try modifying this snippet:
https://gist.github.com/spivurno/ad05a8543ea6b2a6a4845f1caf1fe675
Hi!
I’ve been making all the settings and testing it with diferent mail accounts and I do not get any mail for activate the registration.
Can it be that I am in local?
Sorry and thanks.
Possibly. If you’re having email issues with Gravity Forms, I’d reach out to Gravity Forms support.