How to Customize the WordPress Login Screen

April 23rd, 2007

For Wordpress bloggers, the wordpress login page is the most common page you visit everyday to login and edit your blog. Though they have beautified the login screen (blog-url/wp-login.php) in Wordpress 2, you can customize it further to express your creativity.

I never really need to visit the login screen since I use a single user personal computer and click the “Remember me” box, such that I stay logged in forever. However, there are many people who need to login daily for security reasons on public computers (which is a good idea), and a custom login screen would be a good idea.

I got this idea from Rishi Raj, a member of the Indian Technology Bloggers network, who is trying to give a professional touch to his blog by changing the images of the wp-login.php file.

He advises to change the login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif / login-bkg-bottom_new.gif images located in your blog’s /wp-admin/images folder. Replace with your custom images taking care of similar size and placement. Remember to keep a dark background or the white text will merge with a white background. Its a simple substitution of images which is safe also since you do not edit any php coding. Here are some more examples here and here of images to be created and the new look.

If you want a bigger wordpress hack to customize the wordpress login screen further, then try these ways to customize the Wordpress Login Screen in 10 Steps. This hack will require editing three php files (using any text editor) and uploading via ftp:
* /wp-login.php
* /wp-register.php
* /wp-admin/wp-admin.css

Again its a quick job. But remember that when you upgrade wordpress, all these customizations have to be redone. Based on these 2 tips, you can develop your own ideas. I stress the importance of backing up the original copy of all these files before editing these php files, so you can always ftp the original file if something goes very wrong.

If your wordpress install supports multiple users, edit the login screen and surprise other users! I am sure you will get a lot of buzz…

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