Development Status of Customizable Profile Fields

We’ve been working on Customizable Profile Fields for some time. We wanted to make them just right for you and for your community.

It isn’t easy. We looked at how other companies made them and we weren’t impressed. Some lacked usability, others were just ‘blah’.

Our primary goal was always usability. We wanted to make profile editing as simple as possible for users and for admins.

So we had numerous meetings and brainstorming sessions. We drank far too much coffee, but in the end we worked out a formula that gets the fields exactly the way we want them.

Edit One Field At A Time And Receive Immediate Visual Feedback

No one likes to see a large form when they click “Edit” but too often that’s exactly what they receive. Sometimes users have to pass through a whole wall of options before they can reach the one field they want to change. They just have keep pressing “Next” and waiting for the page to reload. Nobody has time for that!

So we decided to let users edit one field at a time. It happens right in their profiles, and thanks to AJAX, it’s all saved in real time.

It’s beautiful… but we took it a step further. We also added immediate visual feedback so that users always know whether they’ve completed a field correctly.

Immediate feedback to the user.

Profile Completeness

If you already have an established website, some of your members may be missing details from their fields, such as gender or location. So we’ve added a Profile Completeness progress bar. Users can see immediately when something is missing in in their profiles… and it changes in real time. (We seriously love AJAX!) The Profile Completeness bar disappears only when all the fields are complete.

Required Fields Release Members

Users who have not completed fields marked “required” will be taken to their profile editing page. They will not be able to browse community (PeepSo) until they have completed all the required fields.

When they’re done, they’ll see a funky, green flash! Just so they know they did a good job!

Easy Profile Editing For Admins

PeepSo 1.6.0 lets admins control PeepSo’s default fields. It’s very simple!

You can change a field’s name and set it as required (or not) with just a couple of clicks. You can hide/disable fields, and drag and drop them to change the order. You don’t even need to press “Save.” Just refresh the profile on the frontend and you’ll see the changes immediately.

CPF Admin interface

But Wait, There’s More…

We’ve all had moments when we’ve had to drop everything in the middle of editing. However you leave Customizable Profile Fields, you’ll always come back to it in exactly the same state. The order will be the same and fields will remain folded… or unfolded.

Beta Testers

So now we’re looking for beta testers. If you are waiting for this to come out. Just send me a message via chat on our community and I’ll sign you up. Be one of the first ones to put your hands on the new customizable fields. They are truly fabulous.

(Please remember that Customizable Profile Fields are still in development. Any problems found will be fixed in the stable version of the plugin.)

Comments? Questions?

Please leave them below.

Brought to you by Eric Tracz

I’m a Digital Nomad currently living in Manila, The Philippines. Co-Founder and CEO of PeepSo.com. First time WordCamp Speaker at WordCamp Kuala Lumpur 2017, WordCamp Singapore 2019 and hoping to speak more soon. I started my journey with open source nearly a decade ago as a simple support guy. Joomla! was my first encounter with the world of Open Source. After that period of my life got phased out I fell in love with WordPress and never left. I have been both lucky and at the same time I worked my ass off to get to where I am right now. Free time, if I have any, is usually spent with my wife and / or travel around South-East Asia. Even when I’m supposed to be on a little vacation, not a day goes by when I don’t check up on PeepSo. So far visited or lived in: Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hungary, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, China, Japan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Norway, Germany, Scotland, England and more… Whenever possible, I jump on my Ducati Monster and just ride.