When you first set up WordPress, you fill in your username and password, or, depending on how you installed it, it might assign a generated login for you. In either case, it ends up on your profile under > users.
But did you ever complete that profile?Have you even thought about it?
There are actually a few things back there that you might want to check, and even take advantage of.
The top part, Personal Options, is more aesthetic than anything, or how you may choose your work style:
Disable the visual editor when writing
When you check this box, it will take away the tab option of going between visual and html when you are doing a post or page. Why check it? While some people only write their posts with html markup and get tired of always changing to the html view when they add a new post or page, typically, most use the visual editor. So if you are not seeing it, check your settings in your profile.
Admin Color Scheme
This one is pretty obvious. It allows you two choices for the colors of your dashboard.
Keyboard Shortcuts
You might explore this if you are really into keyboard shortcuts, but if you do, you’ll have another thing to remember.
Toolbar
If you check this box, the toolbar above your dashboard will be available.
This will appear on your dashboard and when viewing your site, as long as you are are logged in. Again, it’s a personal preference, but it does give you some easy shortcuts, especially when you are viewing your site. But I have heard from people who can’t stand this feature… why, I’m not sure.
Next, your name.
Under here, you will find some basic info, but what’s important is the “Display name publicly as” . For example, where it says “Written by” underneath your posts, whatever you choose here will be displayed. By default, it will show your username. In the example above, Joe has giving himself a strong username. But I doubt he wants his posts to say “Written by joex458NIx230.” So by filling out your first and last name, you can choose to have both of those displayed instead, or perhaps just your first name. The nickname this is great if you want to have a name displayed other than your real name, but you don’t want it to display your username. As you can see in the above example, Joe has used him nickname “Joe the Blogging Man” instead.
Now we have your contact info:
The biographical Info, again, is theme- or plugin-related, some of which may display this info. A good example is the plugin called Author Box Reloaded. You will see this on a lot of blogs: an author bio at the end of the posts. This plugin automatically pulls in the info from the user’s profile.
And of course, there is where you can change your password as well.
What I have shown you here in this post apply if you have a self-hosted blog. If you are on WordPress.com, you will have several more options, including a Gravatar Hovercard that gives commenters an extended popup profile. If you are self-hosted, you can get this feature by installing the Jetpack plugin.
Lastly, if you are self-hosted, you may be seeing more than I covered here. And this is usually because of the theme or plugin your are using.
Two examples of that.
If you are using the Genesis theme from StudioPress, you are seeing this as well.
If you are familiar with Genesis, you can see it brings in a lot of the theme’s features just for the user. From permissions, to customizing the author archive page and its SEO settings, to the layout. Pretty sweet, huh?
Also, I use a plugin called Simply-Exclude, which allows me to exclude certain categories, etc., from search, RSS and other features. When using this plugin, you also get control over the users. So, for example, I could exclude a certain user from the searches.
So there you have it. Your user profile.
Have you visited yours lately?
About Bob Dunn
Pingback: The Week in Review: Blogging Tips to Help You Grow Your Blog – For Bloggers By Bloggers