main page

the only people who have access to the admin tabs are the people you give them to. when someone registers they’re given subscriber access which allows them to see the dashboard and their profile.

If you don’t want them to see that, then disable search around to find out how to disable the dashboard and have the login resolve to the homepage after logging in.

I wouldn’t mess around with disabling the dashboard. instead I’d place this

<?php
  global $user_ID, $user_identity;
  get_currentuserinfo();
  if (!$user_ID):
?>

    <form name="loginform" id="loginform" action="<?php echo get_settings('siteurl'); ?>/wp-login.php" method="post">
    <p>Login Name:<br /><input type="text" name="log" id="log" value="" size="20" tabindex="7" />
    Password:<br /> <input type="password" name="pwd" id="pwd" value="" size="20" tabindex="8" /><br />
    <input type="hidden" name="rememberme" value="forever" />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="<?php _e('Login'); ?> &raquo;" tabindex="9" />
    <?php wp_register('', ''); ?>
    <input type="hidden" name="redirect_to" value="<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>"/></p>
    </form>
<?php
  else:
?>
<h4><?php echo "Logged in as: ".$user_identity; ?></h4>
    <ul>
    <?php wp_register(); ?>
    <li><a href="<?php echo get_settings('siteurl') . '/wp-login.php?action=logout&amp;redirect_to=' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>"><?php _e('Logout'); ?></a></li>
    </ul>
  <?php
  endif;
?>

in your sidebar in place of the deafault login callout.