Do you want to add a custom author Profile page to your WordPress site? Most WordPress themes have minimal author profile detail on their author archive page.

This article will enable you to generate Custom Author Profile page in WordPress.

Step 1. Using WP User Manager to attach Custom Author Profile Page in WordPress

This is advised to all users, as it is simpler to configure and consists added features. Initially, you need to install and activate the WP User Manager plugin. Once activated, you need to visit the user page> WPUM setting page to configure the settings of the plugin.

The plugin automatically generates multiple pages for usage such as custom login, custom user registration, forgot password, account, and profile pages.

WP User Manager, a potent plugin, has lots of option, which need to be reviewed prudently. Turn off the other features that don’t have the usage for you.

In order to set up the user profile settings, you need to click the ‘Profiles’ tab.

In this option, profile page option for guests can be enabled where anyone can view the profile of the user. Here it can be allowed to the members to view each other’s profile and if unchecked the user can see his own profile page only. The user can also upload customized profile photo and showcase his recent articles as well as comments on their profile page. Click the save changes button to store your settings.

Further, friendly SEO URLs or permalinks for the author profile page needs to be selected. This can be done by going to settings > Permalinks page and scroll down to the ‘User profile permalink base’ segment.

The plugin offers the user to use user ID, username, or nickname in the URL, which are SEO friendly in comparison to user ID. Select one of them and click on the save changes button for the storage of your permalink settings.

The customized author profile page is nearly ready, which you can allow the users to comfortably find the profile page on your website.

The logged out user will be shown a login form by the sidebar widget. The form will also include a link to sign up, if the user is allowed to register on your website.

The plugin would change author links on your website and point them to the author profile page rather the default author’s archive pages.

Altering layout of Author Profile Pages

You can change the border or colours just by adding custom CSS.

You will need to edit the plugin’s template files, if you want to change the layout and order of things. WP User Manager remains equipped with custom template support which means, one can create own template inside their current theme for the plugin to use.

First, connect to your website using the FTP client and then proceed to /wp-content/plugins/wp- user- manager/templates/ folder. Download to your computer all the files you see there.

Next, create a new folder “wpum” by going to your current theme folder. Now all the downloaded files need to be uploaded.

Now the files can be edited to customize the appearance of your profile pages as required.

Step 2. Generating a Custom Author Profile Page in Your Theme manually

This process asks you to edit your child theme files or WordPress. Kindly view our guide on how to copy and the paste code in WordPress, if you have not done earlier.

First of all, connect to your website using an FTP client and then proceed to /wp content/themes/your- current-theme/ folder.

You are required to create an author.php file, inside your current theme folder. Thereafter copy the content of archive.php file and paste them inside your new author.php template.

You can also edit the file, if your theme already has an author.php file.

Your aim is to display the author’s profile information after getting it. In order to edit you need to decide first, where to edit? Normally anything can be edited between the get_header(); and get_sidebar() lines.

This code displays recent posts by the author by simply adding an author profile card at the top of the page. This code can be customized according to your need. An additional user profile field can be added to your website, such as author’s Facebook and Twitter profile links, show featured images for posts, and many more.

To give your author profile card decent look, here is some sample CSS. You can change to match your theme color by adding it as custom CSS in your theme.

This is how it looks on our demo website:

We hope this article helped you to address your concern.

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