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If, like me, you’re wondering just what allowing someone to register on your blog means exactly, read on. It took me awhile to finally phrase my search question in such a way that I was able to obtain the correct answer I was seeking. Search Engine returns for “What, exactly, are the benefits of registering on a blog site?” didn’t prove at all useful, but that’s the basic answer I was wanting to obtain. Eventually I figured out I needed to be asking about the “subscriber role” which resulted in my getting a link on WordPress.org that discusses all of the user roles and their respective capabilities. This is one of those times that knowing the proper keywords to use was absolutely necessary to obtain useful links!

According to the Codex WordPress article: “WordPress has five pre-defined Roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. Each Role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. There are many Capabilities including publish_posts, moderate_comments, and edit_users. The default Capabilities are pre-assigned to each Role.”

The article then proceeds to describe each of the five pre-defined Roles and lists exactly what each role allows the user to do on your blog. Scrolling on down to the Subscriber Role capabilities offers one word: Read.  OK, so they are capable of reading the blog if they sign up as a subscriber, but so can anyone who doesn’t register (providing you don’t have a registration requirement for blog access that is).  Originally I thought it might notify them of new posts, but subscribing doesn’t send them any emails, as it’s not an opt-in newsletter type of registration. It also has nothing to do with adding the RSS feed to their reader.

Working my way down the article and I’m eventually rewarded with a description of Read Capability.  Short version explanation: they are allowed access to the administration panel/user profile/ page only. They can setup their profile page and that’s the extent of what registering permits them to do as a subscriber to your blog.  So what’s the purpose of that?  Well,  if you so choose, registering can be a requirement before a reader is allowed to add a comment.  Legit readers will find it faster and easier to add comments if they have registered. But, depending on your discussion page settings, it could allow a spammer to sneak in under your spam controls.

I’d personally be careful about allowing comments from anyone with a previously approved comment to bypass your personal inspection before appearing live on your blog.  I prefer to either disallow subscriber abilities altogether if it really isn’t a blog needing or wanting reader contribution, or at the very minimum, that no comment appears without my approval.

Another excellent article you might want to reference is Gary Cao’s Ultimate Guide to Roles and Capabilities that he posted to his  WPHardcore blog in April, 2010.  Lots of additional information there about capability plugins and adding custom abilities to the various role levels.