WordPress Wednesday Tip 26: How to Update Your User Profile in WordPress
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Don’t you just love WordPress? Its flexibility. Its user-friendliness. Its . . . everything. Well get ready to fall even more head over heels because this week, we’re going to show you some different settings you can tweak in WordPress that will help:
- Customize your experience
- Boost your SEO
- Build trusting relationships with your visitors
- And more!
And the best part? These settings are all on one screen — your User Profile!
Ready to learn how to update your user profile in WordPress? Great! Let’s get started!
WordPress Wednesday Tip 26: How to Update Your User Profile in WordPress
Accessing Your Profile
1. From your dashboard, hover over either your picture and click ‘Edit My Profile’ or hover over ‘Users’ and click ‘Your Profile’.
2. You’re now in your User Profile. From here, you can manage and update your profile.
Use a Notepad Type Text Editor When Writing
3. If you only want to use code when writing blog posts or content on your pages, check the ‘Disable the visual editor when writing’ box in the Visual Editor section. This removes the visual editor tab in content boxes and only provides access to the Text tab.
Don’t know the difference between the Visual Editor and Text Editor in WordPress? The Visual Editor is what makes content areas of your site resemble popular Word Processing programs, such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs. The Text Editor is a plain text editor that is often used to input coding languages.
Customize Your Color Scheme
4. Change the colors of your WordPress administrative features by selecting one of the palette options in the Admin Color Scheme section.
Work More Efficiently
5. If you want to be able to use keyboard shortcuts when managing comments, check the ‘Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation’ option in the Keyboard Shortcuts section.
Keyboard Shortcuts are combinations of keys you press to perform an action, like copying, pasting, bolding, or underlining. They can only be used when working in a visual editor.
6. You can remove the admin bar at the top of the page when viewing the front end of your site by unchecking ‘Show Toolbar when viewing site’ in the Toolbar section.
Become an Editing Pro
7. Appreciate Spelling and Grammar Checkers in your word processing software? Select your favorite options in the Proofreading section and get real-time recommendations while you’re writing.
• Spelling errors and incorrect word usage turn red
• Grammatical errors turn green
• Style suggestions turn blue
More Tips for Increased Efficiency
8. Want to publish a blog post by emailing it? Connect your site to your WordPress.com account by clicking the ‘Link account with WordPress.com button).
Change Your Basic Info
9. You can change your first name, last name, and nickname in the Name section. Just type your information in the box next to the appropriate option. You can also change your public display name by selecting one of the options in the dropdown menu. The Public Display Name the author name in a blog post.
Your username can’t be changed from within your User Profile. This can only be done from within your site’s database.
Connect with Your Visitors & Audience
10. Add different ways that people can contact or connect with you by including your appropriate account information in the various fields.
11. Add biographical information and a profile image in the About Yourself section. Why would you want to? Well, depending on your theme, this information is displayed in posts you publish. For bloggers, this is especially important since you want to build trust and relationships with your readers and this allows them to get to know you better.
Adding a profile picture (aka a Gravatar) is also important since it puts a face to your name when you publish posts or leave comments.
Keep Your WordPress Site Secure
12. You know it’s a good idea to change your password every so often to keep your WordPress site secure. Generate a strong password automatically or create your own password in the Account Management section.
If you forgot to log out on a public computer, or you want to close any open sessions on your devices, you can click ‘Log Out Everywhere Else’ button in this section.
Improve Search Engine Visibility
13. If you have the Yoast plugin installed on your site, you will see a Yoast SEO Settings section. From here, you can add a title to a page that displays all of your published posts, as well as a meta description for search engines. You can also exclude yourself from the Author Sitemap and disable Yoast tools on blogs you write. (Though we don’t usually recommend this.)
Finishing Up
14. Click the ‘Update Profile’ when you’re all finished.
Did you know about any of these settings? Now that you do, will you update your user profile in WordPress?
Like WordPress Wednesday Tip 26: How to Update Your User Profile?
You might also find these WordPress Wednesday Tips helpful too!
For an even more customized experienced, check out: WordPress Wednesday Tip 8: Using Screen Options
Improve your blog’s search engine rankings with a simple plugin in: WordPress Wednesday Tip 19: Optimizing Posts for Search Engines with Yoast