Who uses Yahoo IM anyways?

Hey I do. Well not really, but I have an account. It's a useless field, just like the other instant messenger user name fields on your profile page in the WP dashboard. You can replace them all using this method.

How to customize your WordPress profile fields

In your theme directory, open up the functions.php file, and add this code to it, save and re-upload it.

// Add Twitter profile field and remove Yahoo IM
function add_twitter_contactmethod( $contactmethods ) {
	// Add Twitter
	$contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter';

	// Remove Yahoo IM
	unset($contactmethods['yim']);

	return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter('user_contactmethods','add_twitter_contactmethod',10,1);

What this code does:

The function add_twitter_contactmethod() is asking for the value of the variable $contactmethods.
It sets the variable to 'twitter'.
Removes, or unsets 'yim' as the variable.
Then returns what the new variable is set to which is twitter.
The last part is the hook needed to modify the database table. Read more on add_filter() here.

Add a link to your Twitter page in your theme

Say you wanted add a link to the post authors Twitter page like in the author bio at the bottom of this post. You need to get that information and display it. Using the function the_author_meta() you can get the value of whatever profile field you choose for the author of a post. But first we need check if it exists with get_the_author_meta().

You can add this in whatever template file you want, depending where you want it to show. You could create a custom function and put this in it, then call the function in your theme as well if you wanted.

if (get_the_author_meta('twitter')) { // check if there is a value to get 

	<a href="http://twitter.com/<?php the_author_meta('twitter'); ?>" title="Follow <?php the_author_meta('display_name'); ?> on Twitter" target="_blank" class="twitter">Follow <?php the_author_meta('display_name'); ?> on Twitter</a>

php } // End check for twitter

In order to replace other fields you don't use in profiles you just do the same thing as this except using different names according to what you're removing/adding.

Do you wish there were more options available to use more easily on the profile page?