Can anyone suggest tutorials or URLs where I could find information about how to create a custom members area in WP? I mean when a member is logged in I would like to show him something that is different from standard WordPress members area interface (design).
Custom members area (interface/design) in WordPress, is it possible and how?
When you will create a brand new area, than it is one solution to use the theme on frontend for the members and make an redirect for the members, maybe differnet in the roles, and leve all members on the frontend. But you can also create new backend-pages and redirect the members to this page. It give also many different plugins for this requirement and tutorials (two examples: 1, 2) for start an solution.
Cristian from Cosmolabs have post a great tutorial on how you can build a custom registration/login and profile page for use in the frontend of your theme, it also have some files to download.
hope it helps,
Philip
You may want to try using the WordPress Members plugin to do what you want. Depending on your requirements this can be tricky to implement if you are not too familiar with extending WordPress.
The plugin should provide the functionality you want however ie. a font-end page to manage their profile from.
Don’t really get your queston! If you’re going to put member area on front-end! You can do it as a widget, or as a page and use custom template for that page!
Or you can edit theme yourself, and put that member section there! But better way is you define a sidebar at that position, and make a widget then assign it to that sidebar!
If you want to custom on admin panel!
Looking at these links:
http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/20-incredibly-useful-themes-and-plugins-to-boost-your-admin-area.html
It has lots of resource for you!
Also, look at this links to understand about admin theme and how to custmize it
http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_Admin_Themes
Or look at this
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/10-wordpress-dashboard-hacks
It should be enough for your to dig into now 😉
The problem really is in the user sessions (in my humble knowledge about the subject). Because WordPress already has user sessions for its own admin users, it’s difficult to create a new login-session membership functionality and make it decent. If you wanted to compromise, you could make a login area for a page, and just let it “log the user out” whenever they refresh or move to a new page.