title: WordPress CPT With Ability to Login and Register
body: <p>We're responsible for a WordPress plugin which, as part of it's functionality, has a Custom Post Type called 'Applicant'. These are applicants looking to purchase property so against a post you can record things like their contact details, and search requirements.</p>
  
  <p>Now... it's come to light that we need to enable these applicants to be able to login and perform various actions such as save properties to a 'Favourites' list, or edit their own requirements.</p>
  
  <p>If we were building the plugin from scratch I would've just done them as users, however this is a plugin used by hundreds of people so we don't have that luxury and must keep it as a CPT.</p>
  
  <p>My question is... how can I/should I keep it a CPT whilst allowing these people to login and register.</p>
  
  <p>My two initial thoughts are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>For every custom post you have a WordPress user and keep the two synced (i.e. if the user is deleted, the custom post gets deleted at the same time). That way you could use the built-in log in and security functionality provided by WordPress, but you have this nightmare of trying to keep the two in sync.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>or</p>
  
  <ol start="2">
  <li>We build our own custom 'login' and 'register' functionality. We store the email address and password against the custom post and use that to validate them. Then also perform our own session management etc.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>or</p>
  
  <ol start="3">
  <li>The final option is we do infact scrap the CPT altogether and just use 'users'. Then write some kind of migration script to move the CPT's over to users.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Hope that makes sense. Any thoughts/ideas most welcome.</p>