The email requirement is a WP requirement.
There are various code snippets and plugins to get around this requirement – whether creating users only thru the Dashboard or through open registration:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=wordpress+registration+email+optional
hi @dani-girl,
intersting question, but thought you’re wrong about Directive 95/46/CE. You have a too strict opinion ! If it would be real, nobody in Europe couldn’t use WordPress and probably also many other CMS’s.
Which is the EU country you are off ?
An e-mail is a personnal data and the directive applies. But…
WordPress need it (username, email and password) to work on registering. That is a legitimate and technical reason, which is allowed.
You don’t collect it illegaly, or by roundabout and the user has access to it any time. Emails never appear publicly on WP and are used for internal purpose only.
Opt-in is mandatory since 2002 in Europe. This means you have to prevent/ask the user before he sign in.
If you clearly write and expose publicly (and easy to access) your policy, explain why you ask the mail, that you freely remove any user data on demand for example, you can ask for an email. This is also valuable for cookies. You should inform the user that you use them… Resaling and forwarding emails for commercial purpose is of course forbidden, but only IF your site has no direct reason to do that. (e-commerce is not a direct reason 😉 )
On the other side, as site owner, you can’t use your members email for advertisement or any other mailing action without their agreement. Or you will be considered as spammer. Which is also illegal in EU.
http://www.cnil.fr/english/data-protection/official-texts/
This is just policy now. We will not implement anything that will collect email addresses (Germany is are main reason). Our company rather go the restrictive route at this point since we address nearly 40 coutnries and have to deal with every single one of their privacy / information laws.
Hi Shane,
I’m not seeing any of the suggested puglins ( Optional Email or Registration Plus Redux as they are the only 2 that meet my criteria) showing up in the Buddypress registration process.
Since we have to assing buddypress registration pages, only buddypress’s fields are showing.
If i deactivate buddy press and use the wplogin registration procedure, then either plugin works fine.
what can I do to change it so that when buddypress is active and using its registration page, that either plugin’s options are showing up?
Also nothing in the search comes up with anything to do with disabling email requirement for WP. The best one is only through an admin adding a user.
So, for a temporary solution, I edited the BuddyPress register.php page (in both Default theme and legacy template) to generate a random email address each time the register page loads, and hid the email required field.
would like an option, however, where I don’t have to touch the actual BuddyPress code.
Unless you’re specifically using the default theme, you only have to change this file:
\buddypress\bp-templates\bp-legacy\buddypress\members\register.php
And the recommended approach is to create a template overload in your theme:
Theme Compatibility & Template Files
Made the change to legacy and the change didn’t show up, made the change to default and it showed the changes.
thanks for the template links. will look at that and create a new theme to reflect the workaround.
