Hi James.
What version were you on before. And what other plugins are you using?

Hi Andy,

I'm not sure, but possibly 4.3? I can't remember if I got 4.3.1… I think I skipped an incremental update, so whatever was before 4.3.3 I didn't get, it was the version before that I upgraded from.

Ooops, missed out the plugins bit.. lots of those:

It’s worrying because going through the upgrade script there have been absolutely no changes to member handling. At the same time, none of these plugins appear to have any relevance either. And I assume that knowing the back end as you must, you have checked the settings in Options > Member Settings to ensure they have not been disturbed in any way.

So the work is… puzzling.

Let’s get Steve involved. Any ideas?

Yeah, I checked all the back-end stuff, default User Group for new members is set to “Members”. But new users aren't being assigned to any User Group.

I'll set up an admin account if you want to take a look yourself, I'll PM you and Steve the details. I can't see anything that's out of place. Feel free to create new users to test if you need etc…

OK first the login.

The reason I thought the credentials did not work is following login (from SP OR from the sidebar) the page does not refresh leaving the legend 'You must be logged in to post' and the Login button displayed. When I opened the site again just now I found myself fully logged in and had to refresh the page when I later logged in as my new user.

As far as I can tell the reason you had the user problem was that forum ranks are set up (2 – 'New Member' and 'Member') but neither were pointed at a User Group. If ranks are set up they override the defaults in 'Member Settings' and thus the new users were not placed in a User Group.

This is something we should do some work on I reckon to make sure they are at least  moved onto the fallback position. So I will raise a ticket on that.

At least that is my assumption. I was certainly able to add Yellow Swordfish as a user and find that user in the User Group and login (with the subsequent page refresh of course).

Now – how about you. Do you need us to remove you as a moderator/wiki guy from this site? We would be sad to lose you but just say the word…

I didn't know what you were talking about to start with because I've never set up ranks. Is this something that was added in an update as a default setting?

I didn't think to look at ranks as I've never used them. How would they suddenly appear when I've never added them? I find it really odd that this only seemed to happen after the update too. But yeah, it does seem a problem if a new user can end up unassigned like this.

For the login issue, I've never seen that happen but could it be a cache issue? As an admin it doesn't cache anything for me. I'm using W3 Total Cache for use with a CDN. I've got “/forum/” in the “Never cache the following pages:” option. But maybe that's not working or is set up incorrectly?

Finally, I really want to keep up helping as and when I can, I just don't seem to be as much use as I thought I might be. I spent a few days staring blankly at the source code, just understanding how everything works together with WordPress was a headache. I don't want to hold you back with stupid questions.

I'll help out with the wiki for version 5 and I'll check out what you have for the new version and look at the code again now it's been a few weeks. It just seems like I'm facing a huge wall in trying to get to grips with how everything works.

UPDATE: As I was writing that last post I had another new user register called “Mr Alex” I just checked the User Groups and he's still not been assigned. What's going on?

I was hoping to look into this last night, but family moive got in the way… may find time today, I hope but do have NFL and dinner party…

We had a couple of other users with similar problem, but they both tracked the problem to buddy press though I havent duplicated that… 

I need to re-read Andy's ranks comment a few times, and look at the code, but I am not understanding it.  the standard situation is where ranks do not grant user membership… and believe they are only checked when a post is made…

In playing with that bp issue and just making sure that user group assignment was working, I have been unable to duplicate this behaviour and we have no other reports (not counting the bp ones) of this, so its a bit puzzling…  and certainly my testing is without any usergroup assignment via ranks…  so I need to get on the same page as Andy to what he is thinking there…

I'd like to know if Andy actually had his new user account assigned to a User Group or if he had to do it manually? I still have to manually assign new users to a User Group even though the ranks are set to “Members”. I don't want or need ranks, so can just remove them, I don't know where they came from. But is this really the problem?

Also, now the new version is out do you want me to update. I guess it might solve the issue, or would you prefer me to leave it for now so you can try an understand the problem?

Looks like I got it wrong. Put it down to a really bad mights sleep and trying to work things out too early in the day!

But yes – I created Yellow Swordfish and it placed the user in the Members Group just as it should.

I created that user within the WP Add User panel which shows that the acvtion hoks ARE being fired and SP is picking them up.

So the question then has to be what else is at work when a person registers as a new user. If there a layer of code I am not aware of?

Well from my point of view, the only thing that can affect the login is Theme My Login. I'm also a bit concerened about the login issues which I've now just seen after registering a test acount. I still don't know if that's a cache problem or not….

I can confirm that using the WP “Add User” does indeed assign the member to a User Group correctly, it would only seem to be registering via the site that causes the problem. So maybe this is a Theme My Login bug?

It seems more investigation is certainly required.

I have theme my login here locally, so will have a look at it… If its not using the standard wp api for adding users, then its a problem with the plugin…

If you go to the theme my login settings page, do you see warning such as:

WARNING: The function wp_new_user_notification has already been overridden by another plugin. Some features of Theme My Login may not function properly.

WARNING: The function wp_password_change_notification has already been overridden by another plugin. Some features of Theme My Login may not function properly.