The new 2.7.1 release of WordPress was just too good to pass up.  I had installed it on another clients site (soon to be launched), and just fell in love with the new interface.  It’s very snazzy, I love the auto-updates, and the layout is fab! But there’s one thing that was still missing… themed login pages.

If you follow the mailing list and the TRAC ticket, you’ll know that they’re looking for a more extensive patch for themed login pages, where as I’ve taken a more minimalist approach.  Both approaches are valid with their own pros and cons, but given my choices between upgrading without a themed login, waiting until I found time to create a “more extensive” patch (I’m an impatient person), and just updating the old patch, I chose the third option.  The blog you see before you is the result!

If you already have a themed login page from the previous patch, all you need to do is update to WordPress 2.7.1 and apply the new patch.  Your existing login.php theme template will work just fine with the new patch.  The new patch is attached to the TRAC ticket linked to above.  Feedback is welcome, as always!

Original Themed Login post

Update – I’ve updated the patch so that you no longer include error messages in the custom login_header() function.  This means they can’t be “forgotten” by the template designer.  Unfortunately, it also means that your existing login.php template won’t work.  Luckily, making it work is as simple as removing all references to login_header_error() in your template.  A new sample login.php has been posted on the TRAC ticket.

Update 2 - For those of you who have difficulty patching, here’s the patched file for 2.7.1.

WordPress Themable Login patched for 2.7.1

For those of you who frequently log into and comment on various WordPress blogs (and you know who you are), you may have noticed that the login page is conspicuously unthemed, and looks virtually the same on every WordPress blog on the internet. The savvy user may also have noticed that the login page on this blog is themed. Go ahead, take a look. I’ll wait…

Pretty cool, eh? I submitted a patch via Trac for version 2.3.3 back in February, and updated it today to be compatible with 2.5.1. Well, if the Milestones on the ticket are to be believed, the plan is to incorporate this feature into version 2.6. If you can’t wait that long to pimp your login page, you can get the patch and sample login.php theme page from the Trac ticket. Just patch wp-login.php in your WordPress folder and drop the login.php file in your theme.  Use your own css to style the form, and the new login page will pull in your theme’s header, footer and sidebar, just like any other page.

UPDATE: Looks like they didn’t like the approach that I took for the patch, so they’ve pushed this feature back to 2.7 to give it some more development time.  To each his own, I guess.  I’ll be reworking this patch and resubmitting soon.