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Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with any built-in options for adding your own logo or changing the overall look and feel to match whatever custom theme or branding you have on your site.
This tutorial will show you the basics of how the WordPress login system works and how to customize it to look exactly the way you want it to. We’re going to create a WordPress-inspired login form with a few simple modifications using PHP and CSS.
We’ll be making modifications to the functions.php file in this tutorial so you can see how the changes work, step-by-step. However, it’s WordPress best practice to create a plugin and add any potential modifications there rather than hack the functions.php file.
Otherwise, if you do decide to use any of the code in this article and add it to your functions.php file (into the specific theme folder), keep in mind that you will lose any changes to your site next time you update WordPress.
Customizing the WordPress Login Page
This tutorial will cover several modifications to theme files that will allow you to create your own personalized login page:
- Add a custom background
- Customize the look of the login form
- Change the login logo URL
- Remove the lost password link
- Remove the “Back to” link
- Hide the login error message
- Remove the login page shake
- Change the redirect URLv
- Set “Remember Me” to checked
vReplace the WordPress logo with a custom logo
The login page isn’t part of the WordPress theme setup and if you’ve ever tried to customize the login page you would have discovered that WordPress doesn’t load your theme's stylesheet. But that’s okay because we can create our own.
Here’s what you need to do:
- In your current theme’s folder, create a new folder called “login”.
- In the /login folder, create a new .txt file and name it custom-login-styles.css.
- Next, we’ll need to tell WordPress to load this CSS file, so open up your theme’s functions.php file and add the following code:
function my_custom_login() { echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' . get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . '/login/custom-login-styles.css" />'; } add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login');
Add a Custom Background
For our WordPress-inspired login page, we’re going to use an example image. We can achieve this by adding the following to our custom-login-styles.css file:
body.login { background-image: url('home-bg.jpg'); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; background-position: center; }
Make sure you replace the file name in line 2 with the name of your own image file.
Replace the WordPress Logo With a Custom Logo
The WordPress Codex provides a tidy explanation for how to replace the logo, but since we have already created a CSS file we can just add the following to that file:
.login h1 a { background-image: url('login-logo.png'); }
Save the logo you want to use in your /login folder where your custom-login-styles.css file is also stored.
Don’t forget to replace the file name in line 2 with the name of your own logo file.
Customize the Look of the Login Form
Now we’re going to play with the look of the login form so it better matches the site branding, but you can change the CSS however you like to match the look and feel of your own site.
First, we’ll style the labels to make the text darker, and the form input boxes to give them a more rounded look:
.login label { font-size: 12px; color: #555555; } .login input[type="text"]{ background-color: #ffffff; border-color:#dddddd; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; } .login input[type="password"]{ background-color: #ffffff; border-color:#dddddd; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; }
Next, we’ll style the button to make it a lighter shade of blue:
.login .button-primary { width: 120px; float:right; background-color:#17a8e3 !important; background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#17a8e3), to(#17a8e3)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #17a8e3); background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #17a8e3); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #17a8e3); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #17a8e3); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3 0%, #17a8e3 100%); color: #ffffff; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid #0d9ed9; } .login .button-primary:hover { background-color:#17a8e3 !important; background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#17a8e3), to(#0d9ed9 )); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #0d9ed9 ); background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #0d9ed9 ); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #0d9ed9 ); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #17a8e3, #0d9ed9 ); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #0b436e 0%, #0d9ed9 100%); color: #fff; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid #0d9ed9; } .login .button-primary:active { background-color:#17a8e3 !important; background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#0d9ed9), to(#17a8e3)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #0d9ed9, #17a8e3); background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #0d9ed9, #17a8e3); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #0d9ed9, #17a8e3); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #0d9ed9, #17a8e3); background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #0d9ed9 0%, #17a8e3 100%); color: #fff; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid #0d9ed9; }
While the changes are subtle, they better match the site branding.
Change the Login Logo URL
By default, the logo links to wordpress.org. You can change this to point to your own site by adding this code to your functions.php file:
function my_login_logo_url() { return get_bloginfo( 'url' ); } add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'my_login_logo_url' ); function my_login_logo_url_title() { return 'Your Site Name and Info'; } add_filter( 'login_headertitle', 'my_login_logo_url_title' );
Replace “Your Site Name and Info” in line 7 with the name of your site. This is simply ALT text for the logo.
Remove the Lost Password Link
The “Lost Your Password?” link is helpful if you’ve lost your password, but if someone has hacked your email they will be able to get hold of your WordPress password and take over your site.
To remove the link, add this to your CSS file:
p#nav { display: none; }
Remove the “Back to” Link
The “Back to...” link lets users return to the homepage of your site. We are going for a clean look and don’t want to display the text under our form. To remove it, add the following to your CSS file:
p#backtoblog { display: none; }
Hide the Login Error Message
When you enter an incorrect username or password, the login page returns an error message telling you which details you got wrong. If your username is correct but password is wrong, it will say your password was wrong. If you typed the wrong username, it says “Invalid Username”. While the message may be helpful for you, the problem is that hackers can use this information to guess your login credentials and gain access to your website.
The easiest way around this is to change the error message with this code in your functions.php file:
function login_error_override() { return 'Incorrect login details.'; } add_filter('login_errors', 'login_error_override');
Simply update line 3 to change the error message.
Remove the Login Page Shake
When you enter an incorrect username or password, the login form shakes to alert the user they need to try again.
We don’t really mind this feature, but some people find it annoying. To remove the shake, add this snippet to your functions.php file:
function my_login_head() { remove_action('login_head', 'wp_shake_js', 12); } add_action('login_head', 'my_login_head');
Change the Redirect URL
When you login to WordPress you’re immediately taken to the dashboard. You can easily change this to redirect users to your homepage instead.
Add the following code to your functions.php file so that all users other than admin are automatically redirected:
function admin_login_redirect( $redirect_to, $request, $user ) { global $user; if( isset( $user->roles ) && is_array( $user->roles ) ) { if( in_array( "administrator", $user->roles ) ) { return $redirect_to; } else { return home_url(); } } else { return $redirect_to; } } add_filter("login_redirect", "admin_login_redirect", 10, 3);
Set “Remember Me” To Checked
The “Remember Me” checkbox is unchecked by default. We like to check this when we login, but sometimes you could forget, only to realize afterwards that you forgot and it’s too late. To leave this box always checked, add this snippet to functions.php:
function login_checked_remember_me() { add_filter( 'login_footer', 'rememberme_checked' ); } add_action( 'init', 'login_checked_remember_me' ); function rememberme_checked() { echo "<script>document.getElementById('rememberme').checked = true;</script>"; }
Wrapping Up
So there you go. With a few simple modifications you can easily personalize you login page to match the look and feel of your site.