WP Job Manager gives you a working job board, but it ships without a registration or login page, so candidates and employers have nowhere to create an account. In this guide I will show you how I add both pages with the free Theme My Login plugin, with the exact settings and the screenshots to match.
Key Takeaways
- WP Job Manager has no built-in login or registration page; it leans on WordPress accounts, and the bare wp-login.php screen is a poor fit for a public job board.
- Two settings must be on before anything works: Anyone can register under Settings > General, and account creation in the WP Job Manager job submission settings.
- Theme My Login creates front-end login and registration pages that behave like normal WordPress pages, so you can style them and add them to menus.
- Exclude the login and registration pages from caching, and test the full journey (register, log in, submit a listing) in a private window before sending traffic.
Why WP Job Manager ships without a login page
WP Job Manager focuses on listings: the submission form, the jobs archive, and applications. Accounts are left to WordPress itself, so when a candidate or employer needs to sign in, they land on the bare wp-login.php screen, the same one you use as an admin.
That technically works, but it looks nothing like your site, and it confuses visitors who expect a normal page with your header and navigation. A public job board needs proper front-end registration and login pages, and since the plugin does not create them, we will.
Yes, some membership plugins and themes ship their own account forms, and if you already run one of those you may not need anything new. For a plain job board though, Theme My Login is the lightest route I know, so that is what this tutorial uses.
How to create the registration and login pages, step by step
From bare plugin to working account pages
- Install and activate WP Job Manager
- Allow account creation in WordPress and the plugin settings
- Install Theme My Login and review the pages it creates
- Test registration, login, and a job submission
Step 1: Install WP Job Manager
If the plugin is not on the site yet, go to Plugins > Add New, search for WP Job Manager, then install and activate it. It is the official job board plugin from Automattic, so updates and long-term support are about as dependable as WordPress plugins get.
Step 2: Turn on membership and account creation
Registration fails silently if WordPress itself refuses new accounts, so fix that first. Go to Settings > General, scroll to the Membership row, and tick Anyone can register, then save.
Then open Job Listings > Settings > Job Submission and enable account creation there too, because WP Job Manager keeps its own switches for whether submitters get an account and which role they receive. Leave the registration role on Employer unless you have a specific reason to change it, and decide whether an account should be required to submit a listing at all.
Step 3: Install and activate Theme My Login
Back in Plugins > Add New, search for Theme My Login, then install and activate it. The plugin’s whole job is to serve the WordPress login, registration, and password actions on normal front-end pages that use your theme.
Step 4: Configure Theme My Login
Open the Theme My Login settings and work through the tabs: registration type, redirects after login, and the email notifications new users receive. The defaults are sensible, so for most job boards this is a two-minute review rather than real configuration work.
Step 5: Review the login and registration pages
Current versions of Theme My Login create the pages for you on activation: Log In, Register, Lost Password, and a few others, usually at /login and /register. Open Pages in your dashboard and you will see them sitting there as ordinary WordPress pages.
You can edit them like any page: adjust the slug, add a line of welcome text above the form, or drop them into your navigation menu. If you ever need the form somewhere else, the [theme-my-login] shortcode renders it on any page you choose.
Step 6: Refresh your permalinks
Go to Settings > Permalinks, confirm the structure you use (Post name for almost every site), and click Save Changes even if nothing looks different. Saving flushes the rewrite rules, which is the quiet fix for new pages returning a 404 right after a plugin creates them.
Step 7: Test the registration and login flow
Open a private browser window, register a test account, log in with it, and submit a test job listing end to end. Do this before you send any real traffic, because a broken registration email or a redirect loop costs you every candidate who hits it.
Styling the login and registration pages
Because Theme My Login renders inside your theme, the pages already carry your fonts, colors, and layout. For finer control, add CSS under Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS, targeting the form classes, or override the plugin’s template files in your child theme if you are comfortable with code.
Note that this styles the front-end pages, not the original WordPress login screen, which still exists for admins. If you want that screen branded too, I covered it separately in how to customize the WordPress login page manually, and if you want it harder to find, see changing the wp-admin URL without a plugin.
Compatibility checks before the job board goes live
Two things break these setups more than anything else. First, caching: if your cache plugin serves a cached login or registration page, forms misbehave in strange ways, so exclude both pages from caching outright. Second, email: registration and password emails often land in spam or vanish, and setting up SMTP in WordPress fixes that properly.
If a form renders oddly, test with a default theme and only WP Job Manager plus Theme My Login active. That isolates the conflict in minutes instead of an afternoon of guessing.
So, is Theme My Login still the right choice for a WP Job Manager site?
Honestly, yes, for most job boards it is still the setup I reach for. It is free, maintained, does exactly one job, and leaves your site lighter than a full membership suite would. If you already run a membership plugin or your theme includes account pages, use what you have rather than doubling up; two systems fighting over registration causes more problems than either solves.
The part people skip is the testing. The setup takes fifteen minutes, but the test registration, the login, and the email check are what decide whether real candidates actually make it through.
Stuck getting your job board accounts working?
Don’t hesitate to contact us or email me if the registration flow misbehaves. A login page visitors can find and trust is the difference between a job board that grows and one that sits empty.
Update Logs
03 Jul 2026
- Rewrote the walkthrough for 2026: Theme My Login now creates the login and registration pages for you, so the steps reflect that, plus clearer guidance on the account settings that must be on first and the caching and email checks before launch.
Want our posts to show up more often on Google?
One step & Google will surface this site in your Top Stories.
Hello.