What most people don’t know is that you can call these fields not only in a function, but also in an author template.

For example, instead of using the_author_meta, you use
twitter; ?>

Allows for some SWEET Mashable style profile pages with bio, social networks, etc on top, and recent posts by author on the bottom.

You get access to both the new user id as well as the $_POST variables using that hook which is all you need to use `update_usermeta`

Just had to do this earlier today on a project I’m working on (using WP 2.9.2)

My question for you is can this method be used to create a date of birth field? I want to be able to send birthday cards to each member based on a dob field in the user profile. I am not sure how I would implement this so anything you can contribute would be great.

Again thanks for the great insight.

I’ve added the code above to write to the usermeta SQL table and got it to work in Thesis. But, I’d like to save the new field to the “users” database table instead of the usermeta table. I need to query the users database because I’m attempting to omit authors that have a new_field set to “guest” and would like to use the code below for this.

$authors = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, user_nicename from $wpdb->users WHERE new_field  'guest' ORDER BY display_name"); 

Any idea how would modify your code above to save to the users databse table instead of the usermeta? To me, the two tables look so different that I decided against just substituting “users” for “usermeta” above. I’m pretty new to coding in WP and appreciate any guidance.

<input type="radio" name="account" value="Developer" id="developer" <?php if ( $account == 'Developer' ) echo 'checked="checked"'; ?> />Developer
  <input type="radio" name="account" value="Sponsor" id="sponsor" <?php if ( $account == 'Sponsor' ) echo 'checked="checked"'; ?> />Sponsor

update_usermeta( $user_id, 'account', $_POST['account'] );

Would this be correct:

<input type="radio" name="account[]" value="developer" ID ) ) echo 'checked="checked"'; ?> />Developer

            	<input type="radio" name="account[]" value="sponsor" ID ) ) echo 'checked="checked"'; ?> />Sponsor

And would I have to add just one POST, or multiple?

One:

update_usermeta( $user_id, 'account', $_POST['account'] );

Or Two:

update_usermeta( $user_id, 'account[developer]', $_POST['account'] );
update_usermeta( $user_id, 'account[sponsor]', $_POST['account'] );

If I am on the right path..

Thanks so much for posting this! I’m creating a corporate intranet and this paired with the (modified) WordPress Users plug-in will basically create a mini social network! Good stuff.

Some people had asked how to do this with other forms of input, and, praise God for it, I figured out how to do it with the select menu! Here’s the code (I don’t know if there’s a way to format it as code?):

add_action( 'show_user_profile', 'my_show_extra_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile', 'my_show_extra_profile_fields' );

function my_show_extra_profile_fields( $user ) { ?>

	Extra profile information

	Favorite Color
ID ) );

foreach ($fav_color as $fav_id => $fav) { ?>
  <option  id="" value="">

  Please select your favorite color from this menu.

Hope this helps someone!