CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Total Newb and struggling to understand how to create the front end so that it uses the right pieces of the backend. Any help to point us in right direction would be appreciated.

We want parents to register their children to play in our youth sports programs.
On the front end we first need the Parents to create a free account. Should this use the Contribution Page: Member Sign Up?

We created a New Profile which forces them to create a Wordpress user account so they can log in.
We assume the Parents should be Head of Household because we want them to add their children's names.
How do we have the form make them a Head of Household?
And then do we create a new form where they add their children as individuals or 'Child of'?

We have been through the documentation and the forums. We just haven't found any help on how to make the forms on the front end and what the fields/profiles or whatever in the backend.

We thought creating a Membership site using this tool would be relatively painless but it has been a nightmare.

Your goal is going to be very challenging on the Wordpress+CiviCRM platform.   One thing few people mention upfront is that 80% of all CiviCRM's use Drupal.  Thus integrations between Drupal and Civi are more common and support is better for all things Drupal.

Example: the CiviCRM Webform Integration module for Drupal is designed exactly for the purpose you outline and works great.