Send New User Email To Registrants Even With Custom Password

#1

RE: New User Email Message in S2Member Pro (“Welcome Email”)

Q: Is there a way to make S2Member Pro send out a New User Email Message (aka Welcome Message) even when a custom password has been set?

Discussion: Hi there folks. I have been using S2Member Pro happily on my site for 10 years. I just noticed today that my new registrants to the site are not getting my welcome email anymore, Argh :frowning:

I see that S2Member Pro will not send welcome emails to users now who set custom passwords. Why on earth is there not an option to override this in the Email Configuration settings (in S2 General Options)?

Thank you in advance and I hope you are all safely ensconced away from “covid 19” /kaliko in Hawaii

#2

What makes you say that…is there a line of code you are referring to?

#3

Thank you for asking, Tim. I see that in s2Member Pro General Options > Email Configuration, right at the bottom. I have “New User Email Configuration” set to “Yes (customize New User Emails with s2Member)”; and then below that is “New User Email Message” which says in highlighted blue, " ↑ NOTE: You currently have Custom Passwords enabled in your s2Member Registration/Profile Field options. Therefore, this email is not going to be sent; i.e., it is only sent to users who need it for the purpose of obtaining their password."

#4

Ahhh…I get it now. This is a S2Member message I would not see since I always disabled the custom new user emails feature of S2Member.

Why do I do that?

My clients typically need custom password reset messages. Since S2Member does not offer this feature and it won’t operate if another plug-in takes over this feature, I have this s2member feature disabled. Always have.

The plug-in I use instead for this feature is: https://wordpress.org/plugins/bnfw/ (I am not affiliated or an affiliate). It plays well with all my plugins including s2member.

#5

Thank you for the reply, Tim. I checked out the plugin you recommended and it does look excellent, and I may indeed be forced to use it if I cannot figure this out. I hate to use yet another plugin, especially as it seems s2Member should not have this issue in the first place.

I hope someone from s2Member will see this and reply. Why the seemingly silly arbitrary decision not to send new users an email confirming their activation (and giving them other important info like how to un-subscribe) simply because they are choosing their own passwords? It baffles me.

#6

I took a look in the software and it is not clear when this might have changed for you. According to the changelog this went into effect in late 2016 so it is odd that you have not had reports from users until now! See https://github.com/wpsharks/s2member/issues/870

Here is the explanation (from the code - so it is probably in the S2Member help):

Custom Passwords are easier for users. However, this has an impact on site security. Enabling Custom Passwords disables the New User Notification email that contains a password-setup link for each user. In other words, enabling Custom Passwords effectively disables any sort of email verification procedure, because the user is allowed to set their password during registration, instead of doing that via email confirmation—which is the default WordPress behavior

So…in a nutshell…if you let users submit their own password on registration then there is no need to send them a verification email. As far as I can tell, the S2Member “Welcome” email is actually just a content customization of the native WordPress registration verification email. Don’t need to verify the user…no “Welcome” email.

@clavaque may have something to add. He is the new owner of the S2Member plugin.

Regarding not wanting to add another plugin…I have used this notifiation plugin in my standard plugin suite for over 2 years. No issues at present and only had one glitch in the past (coincidentally missing new user emails) which has since been fixed.