I understanding we may not have a plug-in that would fit in to our requirements in all respects. I am planning to use theme-my-login plug-in. However, it requires fair amount of customization in terms of adding more/custom fields for registering into site. There are some page redirections that I had to insert conditionally.
Can I tweak the code with-in plug-in files?
Should I be extending this through themes files/folders, withough tweaking in the plug-in file structure?
Thanks in advance
It all depends on what you want to change / add, and what the target plugin allows you to do. In general, you can customise some of what other plugins are doing by making use of available filters, actions, CSS, templates, and brute-force WordPress filter/action hooks if that's appropriate.
The Theme My Login, which you reference, presents its various views through templates that you can override either by dropping a customised copy of its template into your theme, or through a filter "tml_template". If what you want to change is the appearance, then you have lots of control through those two avenues. I notice that the plugin has various other filters you can hook, allowing you to customise many aspects of the plugin.
I suggest you start off by reading the plugin's FAQ which points you in the right directions already.
You can tweak the code with anything in Wordpress, but with caution.
If you are customizing wordpress themes, when the themes are updated by wordpress, any customizations are lost.
That is why Child themes are created.
You may find this link useful:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
I suggest creating a new plug in based on the customized code of the Wordpress plug in.
You may find this link helpful. It discusses Wordpress plugins and how to create them.
