Here’s something I’ve never understood: WordPress has a dedicated database table for meta user information. The idea is that all kinds of additional user information beyond the basics can be stored there. WordPress does not, however, include any way of adding new fields to the user registration page or user profiles to take advantage of this, sticking you with the small collection of custom fields it comes with.
Even worse, I can’t find any decent plugins that add this functionality. Cimy User Extra Fields is good, but it uses its own tables. Register Plus uses the built in WordPress user meta table—as well as providing a number of additional registration options—but it’s ability to add new profile fields is extremely limited. So much so, in fact, that it is practically useless. Wordpress Custom Fields looks really good, but I’m not paying for something I could, with enough time, build myself.
Which is probably what will happen. The ability to add custom user information seems like a no brainer, and I’m surprised that there aren’t any plugins dedicated to adding this functionality. WordPress has built-in support for custom user information, it just lacks any way for administrators to add custom user fields.
Update: On another kind-of related not, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1 last night and now I can’t assign posts to categories. Until this is fixed I probably won’t be making any posts, including to the comic, since comic posts are just regular blog posts in the Comics category.
Update: I’ve reverted back to WordPress 2.5 and that seems to have fixed the problem. If anyone actually knows what’s causing this it’d be nice to know.
Liliy said on June 5, 2008 @ 5:44 PM:
I feel like that shouldn’t be as hard to edit as it looks…can’t you ad the fields in the code or something?
Maikeru said on June 6, 2008 @ 7:31 AM:
It could probably be done that way, but then you get the problem I end up having with the other files I’ve modified: making sure to back-up and remake the changes every time I upgrade.
I might try doing it that way anyways, though. I only really need two new fields, one for users birthday’s and one that only I can change which controls access to the MORPG.