Disable auto login upon registration in Wordpress - wordpress

Question

[update1] I am using the ClassiCraft theme and I have no idea where to customize the login and register forms
[update2] I know that the registration process does not go through wp_authenticate because I redefined it inside a plugin of mine
I am quite new in the Wordpress world (actually just got my hands on it for the first time yesterday) and I am having some difficulties finishing up a little project I am working on.
The project is rather simple (or so I thought) and consists in adding a confirmation link to email received upon registration in order to validate the email address provided to prevent using fake emails that the registrar does not even own.
I am about all done except that once I hit the register button it leads to log in the freshly created user.
I googled stuff like "wp disable auto login on registration" and whatnot but I have not been able to find anything that worked. I even tested a few plugins supposed to be doing exactly what I need but none of them worked.
Also, I am not using any plugins for the registration/login forms and it appears that the code in the wp-login.php file is actually not even used...
Would anyone have an idea? Thanks

Answer 1

Okay, so without an access to the theme, i can't really answer you.
But i can tell you what I would try.
1. Add action on user_register hook, to add a post meta that will be useful to check if user has confirm his email.
add_action( 'user_register', 'add_has_confirm_email_user_meta');
function add_has_confirm_email_user_meta( $user_id ) {
update_user_meta( $user_id, 'has_confirm_email', 0 );
}
2. Prevent the user from log in automatically after registration.
Here i can't tell you the hook that will works for you. For example, the hook for the wordpress registration is user_register, but if you have woocommerce, the hook I will use, would be woocommerce_registration_redirect. So try to find what hook is available after the registration with your theme.
In all case, the code in the function would be something like :
function custom_registration_redirect() {
// Log out the user
wp_logout();
// The login url could be an other, with woocommerce for example it is : get_permalink(get_option('woocommerce_myaccount_page_id')
$login_url = wp_login_url();
// Redirect on it
wp_redirect( $login_url);
exit;
}
It will also be necessary, to add a message on this page to alert the user, that he will receive an email to confirm his account.
3. Prevent user from login when he submit the log in form
Add action on wp_login hook to achieve that.
add_action('wp_login', 'prevent_user_from_login', 10, 2);
function prevent_user_from_login($user_login, $user = null ) {
if ( !$user ) {
$user = get_user_by('login', $user_login);
}
if ( !$user ) {
// not logged in
return;
}
// Get user meta
$has_confirm_email = get_user_meta( $user->ID, 'has_confirm_email', true );
if ( $has_confirm_email == '0' ) {
// Clear cookies, a.k.a log user out
wp_clear_auth_cookie();
$login_url = wp_login_url();
$login_url = add_query_arg( 'has_confirm_email', '0', $login_url);
wp_redirect( $login_url );
exit;
}
}
4. Add message on log in page if we get the has_confirm_email to 0
add_filter('login_message', 'has_not_confirm_email_login_message');
function has_not_confirm_email_login_message($message) {
if ( isset( $_GET['has_confirm_email'] ) && $_GET['has_confirm_email'] == 0 ) {
$message = '<div id="login_error">You have not confirmed your email.</div>';
}
return $message;
}
5. Send the email with a link to confirm his email.
You will need to generate a token to add to the url.
For the hook to change the default email sent by Wordpress, you can use wp_new_user_notification_email that is available since the 4.9 of Wordpress.
In the function itself you could do something like :
function wp_new_user_notification_email( $wp_new_user_notification_email, $user, $blogname) {
// Generate the token (there is other function available with php 7, but this one works great)
$token = bin2hex(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(16));
// Add the token to the user
update_user_meta( $user->id, 'confirm_email_token', $token );
// Get your login url
$log_in_url = wp_login_url();
// Add user id and token to the url
$url = add_query_arg(
array(
'token' => $token,
'user_id' => $user->id
),
$log_in_url
);
//
$wp_new_user_notification_email['subject'] = 'Welcome on our website, please confirm your email';
$wp_new_user_notification_email['message'] = 'Blablabla... the url to confirm is: '. $url;
return $wp_new_user_notification_email;
}
6. Hook on the login page to check the $_GET, looking for user_id and token.
Here we check the token and the user. If everything is okay, update the user meta has_confirm_email to 1, so the user can connect, and add a message : "Your email has been confirmed, you can now log in"
add_action( 'login_init', 'custom_login_init');
function custom_login_init(){
if(!empty($_GET['token']) && !empty($_GET['user_id'])) {
if(get_the_author_meta( 'confirm_email_token', $_GET['user_id']) === $_GET['token']) {
// Set the has_confirm_email to 1 so the user can now log in
update_user_meta( $user_id, 'has_confirm_email', 1);
update_user_meta( $user_id, 'confirm_email_token', '');
echo 'Your email has been confirmed, you can now log in';
}
}
}
7. Time for thinking
Okay, after all of his, i'm gonna think a little, and read what i have tell you, to check if there is no mistake ^^. Tell me if you need more explanations.
I think this is a good start for you, and if you find the right hooks, you will achieve this rapidly.
Be careful on some hooks that i have used, because your theme may have use a custom registration or something.

Answer 2

Here is what I did:
added a column in the table wp_users to receive the email confirmation code
built a plugin (details here) called user-emails that allows me to bypass the first email sent upon registration by redefining the function wp_new_user_notification (in which I generate the confirmation code, add it to the user in the DB and send a confirmation email of my own sauce)
redefined the wp_authenticate function inside the same plugin user-emails to allow me to check if the email has been confirmed (column value not null)
created a page for the confirmation with the email and code passed to it that, in case of success, display a message and a link to the home page in order to login
finally got my hands on that one tiny line of code responsible for the auto login after registration located in the page user_auth.php inside the theme folder itself (that file also contains the layout for the login and registration form)
wp_set_auth_cookie( $user_id, true, $secure_cookie );
made sure to display a message after registration informing the user to check his email for the confirmation email