How to display a login form in the sidebar in WordPress

Shashwat Srivastava -

If you have a login form on the sidebar of your WordPress blog, then it becomes easy for visitors to be able to log on to your blog and this in turn increases the visitor interactions with your site. By default, WordPress doesn't provide login form on the blog but we can use Sidebar Login plugin to add this useful feature to our blog. Upon logging on to your blog via this plugin, it takes you to the post you were reading earlier instead of backend. Also, it provides password reminder and new registration links.

To display login form in the sidebar follow the steps listed below:

  • Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
  • Then from the left sidebar, go to Plugins -> Add New.
  • Search for Sidebar Login as shown below:
  • In the search results, locate Sidebar Login row and click on Install Now link.
  • Enter your FTP login details for your web server.
  • The plugin will be downloaded to your web server. Click on Activate Plugin link.
  • After this you will see the following message upon activation.
  • Go to Settings -> Sidebar Login.
  • Change the Sidebar Login settings. Here, I have changed the form heading.
  • Save the settings.
  • Go to Appearance -> Widgets.
  • Drag the Sidebar Login widget to the Main Sidebar area.
  • That's it! The Login form will appear like this in the sidebar for anonymous users:
  • For logged in users it will look like this: