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How to Remove Default Author Profile Fields in WordPress

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Do you want to remove the default author profile fields in WordPress?

No matter what type of website you have, WordPress shows the same standard fields in your author profiles. By removing these default fields, you can customize your site according to your needs and make the WordPress admin panel easier.

In this article, we will show you how to remove default author profile fields in WordPress.

Remove Default Author Profile Fields in WordPress

When Should You Remove Default Author Profile Fields?

When you create an author profile on your WordPress website, you will need to complete the same default fields. These fields remain exactly the same no matter whether you are creating a blog, WooCommerce store, membership site, or some other form of WordPress website.

However, sometimes you may need to remove these default fields. This allows you to create a custom author profile and makes it easier to add new authors to your WordPress website.

For example, you might hide the social media profiles that your authors don’t actually use.

That said, let’s see how you can remove the default author profile fields in WordPress.

Removing Default Author Profile Fields

To remove default author profile fields, we have created some simple code snippets that you can add to your WordPress theme files.

If you haven’t added code to WordPress before, then see our guide on how to easily add custom code snippets in WordPress.

Remove Default Social Media Fields from Author Profile

Older versions of WordPress came with AIM, Yahoo IM, and Jabber/Gtalk as the default author profile fields.

If you are using an older version of WordPress and want to remove these social media fields, then you add the following code to your functions.php file:

add_filter('user_contactmethods', function($methods) {
    unset($methods['aim'], $methods['yim'], $methods['jabber']);

    return $methods;
}, 999);

Remove Author Profile Fields Added by Third-Party Plugins

At times, some plugins will add additional author profile fields to your website.

To stop WordPress plugins from adding custom fields to the author profile section or remove any fields they have already added, just add the following code to your functions.php file:

add_filter('user_contactmethods', function() {
    return array();
}, 999);

We hope this article helped you learn how to remove default author profile fields in WordPress. You may also want to look at our guide on how to choose the best web design software and the best drag and drop page. builder plugins.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

6 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
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  2. gifer says

    aah excellent post, thanks a lot :)

    I think wp should remove these by themself,
    why aim,jabber lol they should add facebook and twitter :P

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