Drupal 7 code snippets for customizing user login and creating custom template file

Reference.txt

http://drupal.org/node/350634
http://highrockmedia.com/blog/customizing-user-login-page-drupal-7

template.php

/*
 * Implements hook_theme().
 * 
*/
function THEMENAME_theme() {
  $items = array();
  // create custom user-login.tpl.php
  $items['user_login'] = array(
  'render element' => 'form',
  'path' => drupal_get_path('theme', 'THEMENAME') . '/templates',
  'template' => 'user-login',
  'preprocess functions' => array(
  'THEMENAME_preprocess_user_login'
  ),
 );
return $items;
}

user-login.tpl.php

<?php //print the variables if needed to allow for individual field theming or breaking them up.

/*
  print '<pre>';
  print_r($variables);
  print '</pre>';
*/

?>

<div class="THEMENAME-user-login-form-wrapper">
  <div class="login-wrapper">
    <h2><?php print render($intro_text); ?></h2>

    <?php
      // split the username and password from the submit button so we can put in links above
      print drupal_render($form['name']);
      print drupal_render($form['pass']);
    ?>

    <div class="user-links">
        <span class="passlink">
          <a href="/user/password">Forget your password?</a></span> | <span class="reglink"><a href="/user/register">Create an account</a>
        </span>
    </div>

    <?php
      print drupal_render($form['form_build_id']);
      print drupal_render($form['form_id']);
      print drupal_render($form['actions']);
    ?>

</div><!--//login-wrapper-->

<!--- // Example, adding a photo 
<div class="login-photo">
  <img src="<?php print base_path() . drupal_get_path('theme', 'THEMENAME') . '/images/login-photo.jpg'; ?>" alt="Login" title="Login" width='327' height='221' />
</div>
-->

</div><!--//THEMENAME-user-login-form-wrapper -->

replace THEMENAME with the name of your theme, put user-login.tpl.php inside templates folder.