User Profile Fields

I have hit a frustrating thing with user profile fields. I have several fields that I want as part of the user’s profile but don’t want visible to the user, both in the registration form and when they edit their profile. I use custom css to hide the fields in the registration form and that works great. There is the option on each field to either show/hide it in the user profile. Thinking that I don’t want the user to see the field, I chose “No” in the “Show in User Profile” option. When set this way, if a user edit’s their profile, when they save it removes the value for the field. Likewise, if you have the box unchecked for that field under the options for a level, it also removes the value for the field.

I also found other settings that kinda relate to this but add to the confusion of what was causing the field to be cleared. There is all of the custom css that can hide fields. Then there is the omit_fields option in the edit-fields shortcode. There is the option in the field settings “Show in User Profile”. Also, there is check boxes in each level. Since all of these can act alone or against each other, it has taken much trial and effort to track down which one does what and how they all work.

If I could recommend that no matter what option you have set, if a field is not able to be modified then it’s value should be left to whatever it is set to.