Basically the query is there are just one or two exclusive registered user only features on my site.
What I am curious about is, is it better to dedicate a separate page after the user logins, to welcome them with a dashboard or some sort, or just redirect them back to home(which I'm currently thinking of) , with an additional link(s) on top showing the available user only features and usual links like logout, change password etc.
If there are just a couple of extra features that registered users have access to, and a user logs in, you should interpret this action (logging in) as the user manifesting her intention to use one of those particular features, and should therefore try to take away as many steps as possible that stand between the user and their purpose.
Now, if one feature is clearly more popular, I would redirect the user directly to that one. Otherwise, I would present a simple page asking the user something like "What would you like to do now?" and offer links to each feature, together with a "Go back to the homepage" link.
