One of the features of WordPress is a content management system that allows users to sign up with different profiles, depending on the type of work or task each user is doing. WordPress includes some default user profiles with different privileges that vary from one to the next. But at the same time, you can add additional information fields to any profile in order to know more about those who use the system.
WordPress comes with a user management system that defines what a user can and cannot do on your site. Knowing WordPress profiles and their permissions are essential for your WordPress to grow. In this helpful article, you will learn about the different roles of WordPress users and compare them to see their usage, and various other plugins you can use to add additional fields to each profile.
By default, there are several roles for a user profile in WordPress. These user profiles, depending on the capabilities assigned to them, allow you to customize the workflow for publications and their administration.
Subscriber Profile – This profile is basically the same as the profile of an unregistered visitor who has not been allocated resources related to content management, let alone site administration. However, a WordPress site can be configured, for example, so that only registered users (including a subscriber) can comment on or show certain content only to registered users. He may also receive newsletter emails
Contributor Profile – The main ability or privilege of these users is that they can create draft tickets, that is, they can create posts but not publish them, which requires an assigned higher profile. Authors can edit their own posts and delete unpublished posts, but they cannot submit files or images for use in their own posts.
Author Profile – Authors can create, edit, delete, and publish their own posts, as well as upload files for their posts. Authors can only work on their own posts.
Editor profile – the editor has access to all the content of the site, can change it, but cannot control outside the content, that is, he cannot manage users, themes, plugins, menus, widgets, etc. This profile is what the site is WordPress developers usually assign to their clients as this allows them to manage the site’s content, but does not have access to its global settings.
Administrator Profile – The administrator has access to all elements of the dashboard and can modify users, themes, plugins, and any content.
Super Operator Profile – This profile is unique to multi-site networks. He is responsible for the complete management of the various sites on the WordPress network and the network itself. Finally, please note that there are plugins for WordPress to create new user profiles. You can also use plugins to edit and manage your user profiles on your WordPress site and enlarge the fields you need to fill in order to get more information about each of your site users.
As you can see, these are the default WordPress user profiles that are very different and are designed in such a way that you won’t have any security holes if you’re using multi-user WordPress. Be careful when assigning these roles to users you trust. For example, don’t even think about giving the admin role to a guy you don’t even know, you can completely take over your site with a spy. You can also use user profile and membership plugins for your WordPress site if you want to restrict content.
How to Use WordPress Plugins for User Profiles?
Wondering how to increase the number of user profile fields when registering WordPress? During user registration, visitors enter key information, which sometimes includes things like email address, username, password, phone number, and more. By default, the amount of information required to register with a WordPress website is small, but you can increase it.
Of course, just because you can add additional fields does not mean that you should. Make the registration process as simple as possible and it will help you. The longer it takes, the higher the chance that the visitor will think again.
Plugins working on this principle are designed to add additional fields for a specific role, several roles, or all users. This means that if you have a certain number of user accounts on your WordPress blog acting as editors or contributors, using this plugin you can find out their satisfaction with the quality of the blog or find out the date of birth so that you can restrict access.
WordPress custom fields are configured in the plugin menu and can be filled in at any time using your WordPress user profile. Additionally, some plugins allow you to add additional fields or validate user fields that are in the WooCommerce plugin, which allows you to collect additional information about your customers if your site is for selling a product.
Why Should you Use Custom WordPress Profiles Fields?
1. With the help of plugin tools, such as a shortcode, you can display information about a user, or a group of users, on the pages of your site or blog.
2. You can filter users by their interests, to display the content that is of interest to a specific user.
3. You can also use the fields to personalize ads, which will increase the conversion of your resource and more advertisers refer to your site to promote your product or service.
4. With the help of various kinds of fields or verification questions, you can weed out unfriendly users, and restrict their rights or prohibit the use of the system.
The plugin Profile Extra Fields by BestWebSoft will help you with all this. It allows you to add an unlimited number of additional fields, display fields in the registration form, and use a shortcode, you can also export data to a CSV file. There are also many types of data that can contain fields from text to links.
Conclusion
In the past year, many countries changed their online rules to prevent companies from misusing user data. Most notable is the GDPR, which has forced every company doing business in the EU to comply with or stop doing business. Companies use your information for many purposes, but they differ for what and why they use this information.
What is similar is how they collect it. Collecting information from visitors allows you to know your audience better and advertise more relevant ads or products to them. Websites collect a lot of information on their visitors when they are signing up. You can collect more or less depending on what you ask or require your visitors to fill out. Make sure you are transparent about what this information is used for with your visitors.
