Your Profile Section lets you how your name displays on your website or blog, your e-mail address for administrative purposes, other personal details, and personal options.

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

You will also learn how to set up a user information box that will automatically link your published content to the Author Archives page of your site and how to use this feature to better promote users or their business online.

Editing Your User Profile And Personal Options In WordPress

On the far right of the Admin Toolbar is the "Howdy, User Name" section ...

Hover over this area with your mouse and 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...

You can also access your user profile using the main navigation menu by going to Users > Your Profile ...

This open up the Profile screen ...

The Profile section contains various subsections that allow you to view and manage information about your WordPress user account.

These include:

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

Let's now review each of these options ...

Profile Fields

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

Main User Profile Area

1 - Accessing Your User Profile

As we've already mentioned, you can access your profile by clicking on the "Howdy, User Name" tab at the very top right hand corner of your admin screen and selecting "Edit My Profile" from the drop-down menu, or selecting Users > Your Profile from the 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

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

Tip: If you experience issues when trying to add code to your content (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 changing your default WordPress color scheme ...

WordPress User Profile: Customizing Your Default WordPress Color Scheme

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

Although this has no impact on what your blog visitors see (the look of your site is controlled by themes) or the functional aspects of your site, this feature can be used to brand the admin area with your corporate colors, or allowing other site users to personalize their own dashboard area.

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

Customizing The WordPress Dashboard

Or watch this video...

4 - Keyboard Shortcuts

Ticking the Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation box allow you to rapidly navigate and perform actions to moderate comments using keyboard shortcuts.

5 - Toolbar

The WordPress Toolbar is located at the very top of your Dashboard screen and provides you (and your registered users) with access to a number of important administrative functions, features, information and "quick links" to other areas of your site ...

Important: Leave the "Show Toolbar when viewing site" check box ticked to display the Toolbar in your WP dashboard.

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

The WordPress Admin Screen - A Tutorial

Profile > Name

6 - Name > Username

You cannot change the username in the User Profile section.

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

You can also change your username inside the WP Admin area using a simpler method that requires no messing with code or modifying your site's database.

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

For a tutorial that explains you how to do this, go here:

Changing Your WP Admin Username

6 - Name > First Name / Last Name

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

Just type your 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 one you originally set up for your WordPress site on your posts, then change the Nickname (required) field and select another nickname from the Display name publicly as drop down menu ...

You can add multiple nicknames in your profile section.

Once you select a nickname, all your posts, published comments, etc. will appear with this new nickname, instead of the one 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 the address of your website or blog into the Website field.

If you have another website or business blog that you want to display 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 using this feature, see the "WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Information" section further below.

Profile > About Yourself

11 - About Yourself > Biographical Info

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

For more details about using this feature, refer to the "User Profile: Useful Tips" section further below.

12 - About Yourself > Password Settings

Here you can change your login password details.

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

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you you how to change WordPress passwords, go here:

How To Reset Login Passwords In WordPress

13 - Log Out Of All Other Sessions

WordPress lets you log out of all current sessions 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 logging securely out of WordPress, see the tutorial below:

Logging Off WordPress

14 - Update Profile

Click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile ...

User Profile: Important Notes

• WordPress only requires your email address and a nickname.
• Your email address is used only for your blog administration.
• 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 publish it, or use a WordPress theme that has been encoded to display the email address).
• Only registered users of your blog have access to the email address you have provided.
• Each email address must be unique.

Also ...

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

There are a number of plugins that allow you to modify user profile fields. You can browse a number of these plugins by typing in keywords like "user profile fields" in the "Add Plugins" section inside your dashboard ...

See Tip #3 in the "WordPress User Profile: Additional Information" section further below for an example of a free plugin that lets you remove unnecessary fields in the Profile area.

[thrive_leads id='18211']

WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Info

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

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

Normally, you would simply 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.

WordPress provides default fields for the following services:

AIM

AIM is a desktop and mobile chat application that allows you to chat with friends or collaborate on a group project online ...

Yahoo! Messenger

Yahoo! Messenger allows you to 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 ...

[thrive_leads id='18211']

Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress Profile

Tip #1: Check that Show Toolbar when viewing site is enabled in the Toolbar subsection of your Profile screen ...

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

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

Once you have done this, a link to the author displaying your selected nickname is added to every blog post published on your site ...

Clicking on the author link takes 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 all content that you (or your guest users) have published ...

You can even include links and basic formatting like bold and italicized words to enhance your author description and promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, etc. to blog readers ...

This can easily be done by typing HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info text area in your Profile section ...

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

If you plan to run a corporate website, you can install a free WP plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that automatically hides the following fields from your site's user profiles and creation pages when activated:

• Color Scheme
• Keyboard Shortcuts Checkbox
• Admin Toolbar
• AIM
• Jabber
• Yahoo IM
• Website
• Biography description
• User Role (every new user is registered as "Subscriber")

For more information, visit the plugin page here: Hide User Profile Fields - Plugin For WordPress

You might find these articles helpful

Your WordPress Dashboard Explained

Customizing Your WordPress Dashboard

DIY Guide to Launching Your Own WordPress Site