Members in a WordPress site must have one or more user roles in order to have access to certain features in the backend. The default installation assigns the Subscriber role for all new user creations unless the administrator decides to manually add the role while creating a user. Users with the Subscriber role have very basic capabilities of reading posts and have access to their own profile in the backend. This role is primarily designed for blogs, even though it can be used for different purposes. In sites where blogging is not a primary feature, it's easier to create and manage custom roles depending on the functionality of the site. In online stores, a buyer might be the most preferred role for new registrations, while students might be the preferred role for learning management systems. So, we need the ability to change the default role to something meaningful, depending on the type of site it is.

In this recipe, we are going to create a custom user role using the User Role Editor plugin, and assign it as the default user role for new user registrations.