How To Edit Your WordPress User Profile

The WordPress Users Profile screen lets you how your name will display on your site, your e-mail address for admin purposes, and additional personal information and optional settings associated with your WordPress user account.

In this tutorial, you will learn about changing your user profile.

We will also show you how to create a user information section that will automatically link your published content to the Author Archives section of your site and how to use this feature to better promote yourself or your business online.

How To Change Your User Profile And Personal Options In WordPress

At the far right of the Admin Toolbar is the Howdy, User Name section …

Hover over this panel with your mouse and it expands to display your Gravatar image, your name and username, and links pointing to your “Profile Screen” and a “Log Out” link …

Select Edit My Profile…

Alternatively, to access your user profile from the dashboard menu, go to Users > Your Profile …

This brings you to the Profile area …

The Profile screen contains a number of subsections that allow you to view and edit information about your WordPress user account.

These include:

Personal Options
Name
Contact Info
About Yourself
Password Settings

Let’s now review each of these options below …

User Profile Options

Please refer to the above image as you go through the sections below.

Main Profile Area

1 – How To Access Your User Profile

As we’ve already mentioned, you can always access your profile by clicking on your username, which is displayed on the top right hand side of the screen, and selecting “Edit My Profile” from the drop-down menu, or selecting Users > Your Profile from the dashboard navigation menu.

Profile > Personal Options

Normally, you can ignore this section, unless you specifically want to customize aspects of your WordPress site administration area that are only viewable to you (and no one else) such as disabling the visual editor when writing, changing the admin area’s color scheme, or enabling keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation.

2 – Visual Editor

Checking this box disables the visual editor and uses the plain HTML editor instead.

Tip: Should you experience issues when trying to add code to your pages or posts (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor by ticking the checkbox in this section.

3 – Admin Color Scheme

WordPress lets you customize the look of your WordPress Dashboard by selecting a global color scheme …

WordPress User Profile: Customizing Your Default WordPress Color Scheme

You can select a new global color scheme for your WP dashboard area from the default choices, or customize the color scheme using various WordPress plugins …

Although this will not affect what your site visitors see (the look of your site is controlled by themes) or the functionality of your site, this feature can be used to brand the admin area with your corporate colors, or allowing registered users on your site to personalize their own admin area.

To learn how to further customize your WordPress dashboard, see the tutorial below:

Customizing The WP Dashboard

4 – Keyboard Shortcuts

Ticking this box allow you to moderate comments faster using keyboard shortcuts.

5 – Toolbar

The WordPress Toolbar is located at the very top of your Administration screen and provides you (and your site users) with access to various useful administrative functions, features, information and “quick links” to other areas of your site …

Important: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” check box enabled to display the Admin Toolbar in your WordPress administration area.

To learn more about the uses of the WordPress toolbar, see the tutorial below:

The WP Control Panel – A Step-By-Step Tutorial

Profile > Name

6 – Name > Username

You cannot change the username in the Profile section.

You can, however, change your username if you know how to edit your WordPress database.

You can also change the username from your WordPress Dashboard using a simpler method that requires no messing with code or modifying your WordPress database.

Changing your username will affect your login, as this username is required for logging into your WordPress site!

We have created a tutorial that explains how to do this here:

Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin

6 – Name > First Name / Last Name

You can edit the First Name and Last Name data in this section.

Just type in the first name and last name into the text fields …

7 – Name > Nickname / Display Name Publicly As

If you want to display a different author name than the name you originally set up for your WordPress site in your posts, you can change the Nickname (required) field and select a different nickname from the Display name publicly as drop down menu …

You can add multiple nicknames in your profile section.

Once you select a new nickname, all your posts, published comments, etc. will then display with this new nickname, instead of the name that you originally set up your site with.

Profile > Contact Info

8 – Contact Info > Email

Ensure that your correct email address is entered in the Email (required) field. This field is required (see “Notes” section below for more information).

9 – Contact Info > Website

Add the address of your website or blog in the Website field (optional).

If you would like to display another URL in your profile, then enter the URL for that website or blog instead.

10 – Contact Info > Other

You can fill in the other Contact Info section fields, or just ignore these.

For more details about using this feature, see the “Your Profile: Additional Contact Info” section below.

Profile > About Yourself

11 – About Yourself > Biographical Info

In this section, you can insert a personal or business description for your site visitors or blog readers.

This feature not only lets you tell the world about yourself or your business, it can also be used to convert new visitors into leads for your products or services.

For great tips on how to write a truly compelling bio section that will help improve your conversions, see the article below:

How To Write A Killer Bio Section For Your Website

For more details about using this feature, refer to the “Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress Profile” section further below.

12 – About Yourself > Password Settings

This section lets you change your login password details.

Use the New Password section only if you are required to change your login password. You will need to enter your new password twice before the system can accept the password change.

For more information about changing WordPress passwords, go here:

How To Change The Login Password

13 – Log Out Of All Other Sessions

WordPress lets you log out everywhere except your current browser. This is useful if, for example, you have left your account logged in at a public computer, or if you’ve lost or misplaced your phone.

To learn more about how to log out of WordPress, see the tutorial below:

Logging Off WordPress

14 – Update Profile

Don’t forget to click ”Update Profile” if you change any details in your profile to update your settings …

Notes

WordPress only requires an e-mail address and a nickname.
Your email address is used only for administration purposes.
The email address on your profile is never sent to any other site (including WordPress) and it is never displayed on your site (unless you specifically decide to display it, or use a WP theme that has been encoded to display the email address).
Only registered users of your blog can access the email address you have provided.
Each user’s email address must be unique.

Also …

Adding certain plugins to your site (e.g. for adding social media features), may insert or remove fields in the User Profile section (e.g. add a Twitter username field, insert additional functionality settings related to the plugin, etc…)

There are a number of plugins that let you customize user profile fields. You can find many free plugins by going to Add Plugins and searching for “user profile fields” inside your dashboard …

See Tip #3 in the “Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile” section further below for an example of a free plugin that lets you hide unnecessary fields in your Profile section.

WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Info

As mentioned previously, the WordPress Profile area has a number of fields that allow you to enter extra contact information such as:

Normally, most users just leave these fields empty. Some WordPress theme developers, however, may choose to customize their templates to display this and other contact information.

If this is the case, then you can choose to set up accounts with these services (if you haven’t already done so) and then add your details to the appropriate fields in the Contact Info section.

Currently, WordPress provides default fields for the following services:

AIM

AIM is a desktop and mobile chat application that lets you chat with friends or collaborate on a group project online …

Yahoo! Messenger

Yahoo! Messenger lets you connect and chat with friends from any web browser or mobile device …

Jabber / Google Talk

Although this field says “Jabber / Google Talk”, clicking on the link actually takes you the Google Hangouts website.

Google Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat platform developed by Google. It replaces three products that Google had implemented concurrently within its services, including Google Talk, Google+ Messenger (formerly: Huddle), and Hangouts, a video chat system present within Google+ …

Tip: If you plan to run webinars online using Google Hangouts, then check out this article we’ve written about a great plugin that lets you run a business-level video conferencing platform on your WP site using Google Hangouts:

RunClick – Video Conferencing Plugin

Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile

Tip #1: Make sure the “Show Toolbar when viewing site box is ticked in the Toolbar section of your Profile area …

Tip #2: Your user profile gives you an additional opportunity to create additional backlinks which can be indexed by search engines.

To start with, add a Nickname and/or select a different name to display as the author of your posts …

After you have set this up, a link to the author displaying your specified nickname gets added to every blog post published on your site …

Clicking on the author link takes site visitors to the Author Archives section, where people can learn more about you (or about other authors publishing content on your site) and see what other blog posts that you (or other users) have published …

You can also insert links and simple formatting like bold and italicized words to improve your author description and promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, etc. to your site visitors …

To do this just paste HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info text box in your Profile section …

Tip #3 (Advanced User): Hide User Profile Fields

You can install a free WordPress plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that instantly hides the following fields from your site’s user profiles and creation pages when activated:

Color Selector
Keyboard Shortcuts Checkbox
Toolbar
AIM
Google Talk
Yahoo IM
Website address
Biography description
User Role (every new user is created as “Subscriber”)

To learn more, visit the plugin page here:

Hide User Profile Fields – Free Plugin For WordPress

Congratulations! Now you know how to edit your WordPress user profile and personal options.

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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)