That Email Address is already in use. Please try again

Hi!

You can modify the message users see when encountering this state, but it requires a little bit of coding.

Doing a quick search on the forums here, I see several topics on how to accomplish this: https://www.ads-software.com/search/change+login+error+message

Check those out – it involves modifying the functions.php file.

Please backup your site and the functions.php file before making any changes.

Good luck out there!

Thank you @dansoschin – but those links are for login errors. I need signup errors, but I can’t find any relevant pages when I search – only login errors.

Would you consider using a plugin to manage your registrations? If so, many of the form plugins allow you to customize the error messages displayed to users.

Almost anything considered, @dansoschin. We use s2Member to manage the membership, but they just tell me it’s a WordPress issue and they can’t help…
If you could perhaps suggest any plugins I might look at, that would be a great help. (Thanks)!

Hi! I checked with some other folks whose knowledge of WP customization and the plugin ecosystem is greater than mine… and the consensus is that this specific message is not customizable through the interface or a plugin. One colleague recommended trying a workaround using email notifications and a plugin like this: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/bnfw/ … but I realize this is not the exact solution you are seeking.

Another option would be to reimagine the signup process and maybe create a resource that you can either email people or place somewhere on your website that assists users with issues such as this one.

Sorry I don’t have a more concrete solution. I will post this as a feature request for you though!

Thank you once more @dansoschin .
I posted on the s2Member Forum (Web Sharks) and @thesimarchitect kindly gave me some javascript which I put in the header of the signup pages, and “voilà” the error message now says something sensible!
I understand the script should be in the footer, rather than the header, so I will do that soon.
Thanks again for your help

Core Trac ticket

The s2Member plugin uses the ‘registration_errors’ filter to replace the standard message with the “Please try again” text. To override this, you may need to use their ‘ws_plugin__s2member_custom_registration_field_errors’ filter in a custom plugin instead of using ‘registration_errors’ again at a later priority (more than 10).

Here’s one possible filter:

<?php
add_filter( 'registration_errors', 'wpsf14635722_registration_email_exists_message', 99, 3);
function wpsf14635722_registration_email_exists_message( $errors, $sanitized_user_login, $user_email ) {
	$login_url = network_site_url( '/wp-login.php' );
	$errors->remove( 'email_exists' );
	$errors->add( 'email_exists', sprintf( '<strong>Error</strong>: This email is already registered. <a href="%s">Log in</a> with this address or choose another one.', $login_url ) );
	return $errors;
}

Note: The $login_url in particular may need editing in certain installations, and the above example does not include the __() translation function.