How To Edit Your WordPress User Profile

Your Profile section lets you how your name displays on your website, your e-mail address for administrative purposes, other personal information, plus additional settings.

In this blog post, you will learn how to change your WordPress user profile and configure other contact details.

We will also show you how to set up a biographical info box that automatically displays your content on the Author Archives area of your site and how to use this feature to better promote yourself or your business online.

Editing Your User Profile And Personal Settings In WordPress

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

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

Choose Edit My Profile…

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

This brings you to the Profile section …

The Profile area contains various subsections that let you manage information about your WordPress user account.

These include:

• Personal Options
• Name
• Contact Info
• About Yourself
• Change Password

Let’s review each of these sections below …

User Profile Settings

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

Main User Profile Screen

1 – How To Access Your User Profile

As described previously, you can 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 using the main navigation menu.

Profile > Personal Options

Normally, you can just 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

Ticking the “Disable the visual editor when writing” box disables the visual editor and uses the plain HTML editor instead.

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

3 – Admin Color Scheme

In version 3.8, WordPress introduced a new design feature that allows you to customize the look of your WordPress Dashboard by selecting a global color scheme …

WordPress User Profile: Customizing The Default WordPress Color Scheme

You can select a different global color scheme for your WordPress admin area from the default choices, or add a custom color scheme using WordPress plugins …

Although this will not affect what your site visitors see (the design of your site is controlled by your theme) or the functional aspects of your site, this feature can be used for branding the dashboard area with your corporate colors, or allowing other site users to personalize their own  admin area.

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

• Customizing Your WordPress Dashboard Screen

4 – Keyboard Shortcuts

Ticking the Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation box allow you to use keyboard shortcuts on comments.

5 – Toolbar

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

Note: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” check box enabled to display the Admin Toolbar in your WP admin area.

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

• The WordPress Control Screen – A Step-By-Step Tutorial

Profile > Name

6 – Name > Username

The username cannot be changed in the User Profile screen.

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

You can also change the username from your WordPress Admin area using a simpler method that requires no code editing or messing around with your site’s database.

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

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

• How To Change Your WP Admin Username

6 – Name > First Name / Last Name

You can modify the First Name and Last Name details 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 registered for your site or blog on 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 to your profile section.

If you select a new nickname, all your blog posts, comments, etc. will appear with this new nickname, instead of the name that you originally installed WordPress with.

Profile > Contact Info

8 – Contact Info > Email

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

9 – Contact Info > Website

Enter your website URL in the Website field.

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

For more details about this feature, refer to the “User Profile: Additional Contact Info” section below.

Profile > About Yourself

11 – About Yourself > Biographical Info

This section lets you add a personal or business description for your 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 Profile” section further below.

12 – About Yourself > Password Settings

Here you can change your login password details.

Use this section only if you need to modify or reset your login password. You will need to enter the new password twice before the system can accept the password change.

To learn more about what to do if you have lost or forgotten your password in WordPress, go here:

• What To Do If You Lose Or Forget The Login 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.

For more information about logging out securely in WordPress, see this tutorial:

• Logging Out Of WordPress

14 – Update Profile

Click ”Update Profile” at the bottom of the page to save your changes …

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 site (unless you choose to display it, or use a theme that has been encoded to display your email address).
• Only registered users of your blog can access the email address you have entered.
• 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 area (e.g. add a Twitter username field, insert extra settings related to the plugin, etc…)

There are various plugins that let you modify user profile fields. You can browse these plugins by typing in keywords like “user profile fields” in the “Add Plugins” section inside your dashboard …

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

Your Profile: Additional Contact Info

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

• AIM screen name
• Yahoo! Messenger ID
• Jabber / Google Talk name

Most users simply leave these fields empty. Some WordPress theme developers, however, may choose to display this and other contact information in their themes.

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”, if you click on the link in this section, you will actually be taken to Google Hangouts.

Google Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat platform developed by Google. It replaces three messaging 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 webinars on your website using Google Hangouts, then see this article we’ve written about a great plugin that lets you manage a business-level video conferencing platform on your WP site using Google Hangouts:

• RunClick – WordPress Webinar And Video Conferencing Software

Useful Tips Related To Your Profile

Tip #1: Make sure that Show Toolbar when viewing site is enabled inside the Toolbar section of your Profile screen …

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 on your blog posts …

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

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

You can even include hyperlinks and basic text formatting like bold and italicized words to enhance your author description and promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, etc. to your site visitors …

This is easily done by adding HTML formatted text into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section …

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

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

• Colors Profile
• Keyboard Shortcuts Checkbox
• Admin Toolbar
• AIM
• Jabber
• Yahoo IM
• Website field
• Biographical Info box
• User Role (every new user is registered as “Subscriber”)

For more information, visit the plugin page here:

• Hide User Profile Fields

Congratulations! You have just learned how to change your user details and personal options.

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