How To Edit Your WordPress User Profile

The Profile screen lets you configure your name and how to display it on your website, your e-mail address for admin purposes, optional contact details, plus personal settings.

In this blog post, you will learn about changing your WordPress user profile.

We will also show you how to create a “resources” section that will display in the “Author Archives” area of your site and how to use this feature to better promote yourself or your business online.

Changing Your User Details And Personal Settings In WordPress

At the far right in your admin area is the Howdy, User Name section …

If you hover over this panel with your mouse it displays your Gravatar image, your name and username, and links pointing to your “Profile Screen” and a “Log Out” link …

Choose Edit My Profile…

Another way to edit your user profile screen from the main dashboard menu is to go to Users > Your Profile …

This open up the Profile section …

The Profile page contains a number of subsections that let you manage information about your user account.

These include:

Personal Options
Name
Contact Info
About Yourself
Change Password

Let’s now review each of these sections …

User Profile Sections

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

Main Profile Area

1 – Accessing Your Profile

As explained above, you can always access your profile screen by clicking on the “Howdy, User Name” tab at the very top right hand corner of your administration screen toolbar and selecting “Edit My Profile” from the drop-down menu, or selecting Users > Your Profile using the main dashboard menu.

Profile > Personal Options

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: If you experience problems when trying to insert code into your posts or pages (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor by ticking the checkbox in this section.

3 – Admin Color Scheme

With WordPress, you can customize the look of your WordPress Dashboard by selecting a global color scheme …

WordPress User Profile: Changing The Default WordPress Color Scheme

You can choose a different color scheme for your WP dashboard area from the default choices provided, or add a custom color scheme using WordPress plugins …

Although this has no impact on what your blog visitors see (the design of your website is controlled by themes) or the functionality of your site or blog, this feature can be useful for branding the admin area with your corporate colors, or allowing users to personalize their own dashboard.

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

Customizing Your WP Dashboard

4 – Keyboard Shortcuts

Checking the “Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation” box allow you to rapidly navigate and perform actions on comments using keyboard shortcuts.

5 – Toolbar

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

Note: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” checkbox enabled to display the Toolbar in your WordPress admin area.

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

Your WordPress Dashboard – A Tutorial

Profile > Name

6 – Name > Username

Your username cannot be changed in the User Profile area by anyone, including the site admin.

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

You can also change your username from your WP Admin area 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 site!

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

Changing Your WordPress Username From Admin

6 – Name > First Name / Last Name

You can change the First Name and Last Name details in this section.

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

7 – Name > Nickname / Display Name Publicly As

If you want a different author name than the one you originally set up for your site or blog to display on your posts, then 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 change the nickname, all your posts, published comments, etc. will then display with your new nickname, instead of the one that you originally registered with.

Profile > Contact Info

8 – Contact Info > Email

Make sure 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

Type the address of your website in the Website field.

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

10 – Contact Info > Other

You can enter details for the other Contact Info section fields, or just ignore these.

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

Profile > About Yourself

11 – About Yourself > Biographical Info

This section lets you add a personal or business description for your visitors or site 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 this feature, see the “User Profile: Additional Information” section below.

12 – About Yourself > Password Settings

Here you can 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 a step-by-step tutorial that teaches you you how to change passwords, go here:

How To Change Your Password

13 – Log Out Of All Other Sessions

WordPress lets you log out of all current sessions except the one in 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 logging out securely in WordPress, see this tutorial:

How To Log Off WordPress

14 – Update Profile

Remember to click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile …

Important Notes - User Profile

WordPress only requires your email address and a nickname.
Your email address is only used for administration purposes.
The email address on your profile is never sent to any other site (including WordPress) and it is never shown on your website (unless you specifically choose to display it, or use a specific WP theme that has been encoded to display the email address).
Only registered users of your site can access the email address you have provided.
Each email address must be unique.

In Addition …

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

There are various plugins that let you change user profile fields. You can find a number of free plugins by typing in keywords like “user profile fields” in the “Add Plugins” section inside your WordPress dashboard …

See Tip #3 in the “Your Profile: Tips” section further below for an example of a free plugin that lets you hide unnecessary user profile fields.

Your Profile: Additional Contact Info

As mentioned above, the User Profile area has a number of fields that allow you to enter additional contact information such as:

Most users simply ignore this section. 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 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.

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 to Google Hangouts.

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+ …

Useful Tip: If you plan to run business webinars online using Google Hangouts, then see this article we’ve written about a great plugin that lets you run a professional video conferencing platform on your website using Google Hangouts:

RunClick – WP Webinar Software

Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile

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

Tip #2: Your user profile gives you an additional opportunity to promote your business to your site visitors.

As mentioned earlier, you can 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 will be added to every blog post published on your site …

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

You can even add links and text 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 type HTML formatted text into the About Yourself > Biographical Info 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 automatically hides a number of fields when activated, such as:

Color Scheme
Keyboard Shortcuts
Admin Toolbar
AIM
Jabber
Yahoo IM
Website field
Biography description
User Role (every new user is created as “Subscriber”)

For more information, visit the plugin page here:

Hide User Profile Fields

Congratulations! You have just learned how to edit your user details.