WordPress Tutorial for Beginners: You can specify your name and decide how it is displayed on your website through your profile section. This also includes how you want to display your:
- Email address for administrative purposes
- Personal details – optional
- And Additional settings
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This tutorial reveals how to edit your WordPress user profile and also how to configure the optional contact information.
The Users Profile Area lets you how your name will be displayed on your site, your e-mail address for admin purposes, and other personal information and personal options associated with your WordPress user account.
You will also learn how to create a “resources” section that automatically displays your published content on the Author Archives area of your blog and how to use this feature to better promote an author or their business online.
WordPress Tutorial for beginners: How To Change Your User Profile And Personal Options In WordPress
On the far right in your administration area is the Howdy, User Name section …
Hover over this panel 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 …
Select Edit My Profile…
Another way to edit your user profile section using the main navigation menu is to go to Users > Your Profile …
This open up the Profile screen …
The Profile screen contains a number of subsections that allow you to manage information about your WordPress user account.
These include:
- Personal Options
- Name
- Contact Info
- About Yourself
- Change Password
Let’s go through each of these sections below …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile Fields
Please refer to the screenshot above as you go through the sections below.
Main Profile Screen
1 – Accessing Your Profile
As we’ve already mentioned, 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
You can typically 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 colour 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: Should you experience any issues when trying to add code to your posts or pages (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor checkbox in this section.
3 – Admin Colour Scheme
With WordPress, you can customize the look of your WordPress Dashboard by selecting a global colour scheme…
WordPress User Profile: Changing The Default WordPress Colour Scheme
You can select a different color scheme for your WordPress administration area from the default choices, or add a custom colour scheme using WordPress plugins …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners
Although this has no impact on what your blog visitors see (your theme controls the look of your site is controlled by themes) or the functionality of your site, this feature can be useful to brand the dashboard area with your corporate colours, or allowing other site users to personalize their own dashboard.
WordPress Tutorials for Beginners: To learn how to customize your WordPress dashboard, see the tutorial below:
How To Customize The WordPress Dashboard Screen
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 Toolbar is located at the very top of your Administration screen and provides you (and your registered site users) with access to various 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 Toolbar in your WP administration area.
WordPress Tutorial for Beginners: To learn more about the WordPress toolbar, see the tutorial below:
Profile > Name
6 – Name > Username
Your username cannot be changed in the Profile section by anyone, including the site administrator.
You can, however, change your username if you know how to edit your WP database.
You can also change the username inside the WordPress Admin area using an easier method that requires no code editing or messing with your site’s database.
Changing your username will affect your login, as this username is required for logging into your site!
For a tutorial that teaches you how to do this, go here:
How To Change Your Admin Username
6 – Name > First Name / Last Name
You can edit your First Name and Last Name details in this section.
Just type the first name and last name into the name fields …
7 – Name > Nickname / Display Name Publicly As
If you want a different author name than the one you originally set up for your WordPress site to display on your posts, you can change the Nickname (required) field and select your new 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 then display with your new nickname, instead of the one 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 into 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 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 blog readers.
For more details about using this feature, see the “Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile” 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 tutorial that teaches you you how to change your WordPress password, go here:
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’ve left your account logged in at a public computer, or if you’ve lost or misplaced your phone.
For more information about logging securely out of WordPress, see the tutorial below:
14 – Update Profile
Click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Important Notes
- WordPress only requires your e-mail address and a nickname in the User Profile section.
- 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 decided to publish it, or use a particular WP theme that displays 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.
In Addition …
Installing certain plugins on your site (e.g. for adding social media features), may insert or remove fields in your User Profile area (e.g. add a Facebook URL field, insert extra settings related to the plugin, etc…)
There are a number of plugins that allow you to change user profile fields. You can find a number of these plugins by typing in keywords like “user profile fields” in the “Add Plugins” section inside your WordPress 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 remove unnecessary user profile fields.
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile: Additional Contact Info
As mentioned earlier, 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, most users simply ignore these fields. 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.
Currently, 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 …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners:
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 be taken to Google Hangouts.
Google Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat platform developed by Google. It replaces three products that Google had previously implemented 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 on your website using Google Hangouts, then check out this article we’ve written about a great plugin that lets you manage a business-level video conferencing platform on your WP site with Google Hangouts:
RunClick – Video Conferencing Software
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile: Useful Tips
Tip #1: Make sure that Show Toolbar when viewing site is enabled in the Toolbar information area 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 …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners
Once 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 blog visitors to the Author Archives section, where people can learn more about you (or about other authors registered as users on your site) and see all content that you (or other authors) have published …
You can insert 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 site visitors …
To do this just add HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section …
Tip #3 (Advanced User): How To Hide User Profile Fields
If you plan to run a corporate website, you can install a free plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that automatically hides a number of fields when activated, such as:
- Color Scheme
- Keyboard Shortcuts Checkbox
- Toolbar
- AIM
- Google Talk
- Yahoo IM
- Website
- Biography description
- User Role (every new user is registered as “Subscriber”)
To learn more, visit the plugin page here: WordPress Plugin – Hide User Profile Fields
Congratulations! You have now learned how to change your user profile in WordPress Tutorial for beginners
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.