As soon as you started using WordPress, the system automatically created your user account. In this lesson I will show you how you can change its parameters.

To get started, you need to click on the option located in the upper right corner of the screen and select Edit My Profile from the menu. You can achieve the same result if you look for the Users option in the administration panel and select the Your Profile function from the menu. After that, you will see Profile page, and it is divided into several segments. As you can see, in the first part there are options that allow you to adapt the working environment to your needs, and this primarily refers to the use of the so-called Visual Editor. In my case, it is currently on, which means that when creating new posts, all existing elements will be displayed on the screen in their original form. If you don’t like it, you can simply click on this square and from that moment on, only HTML code will be displayed on the screen.

The next option allows you to choose a different color combination for your administration panel. This, of course, has nothing to do with the appearance of your site, but only with the working environment. I have currently chosen a combination dominated by dark tones, but this can easily be changed. It is enough to click on one of the schemes offered, and the system will automatically adapt to the selected parameters. As you can see, the choice is quite large, so I hope you can easily find a combination that you like. I’m used to the basics of color, so I’ll go back to the first combination.

The next option allows you to use shortcuts and thus make certain operations easier for yourself, such as editing comments. You can find out more about this by clicking on the More Information option, and since there are no such contents on my site, I will immediately move on to the next option. It refers to the use of the Toolbar, the menu located in the upper left corner of the screen. For me, it is turned on and available in all modes, because I often use some of its options. If you think it is unnecessary, simply activate this option and the Toolbar will become invisible. Unfortunately, this only applies to the so-called Front End mode, which normally serves to view the final version of the site. After that, as a link to the Editor, you can use the links that are usually found on the page itself. I prefer to use the Toolbar for these purposes, so I will activate it again.

The following segment is reserved for your personal information. At the moment, only the username field is filled in, so I will use the opportunity to enter my real name and surname. WordPress will automatically enter information that matches my user account in the Nickname field, which is not good. In order to prevent misuse, this information should be changed, so instead of the last two letters I will enter numbers. Of course, this is just one of the ways you can additionally protect your site, and you will hear much more about this topic in one of the following lessons.

If you do not want the name you use to log in to the system to appear on the site in the same form, use the following option. To make it clearer to you, I will go back to one of the posts and show you where this information is located. As you can see, it appears as a link right below the title. Since the system now has more data, I can click on this arrow and choose one of the proposed solutions from the list. It can be my username, real name, last name or some combination thereof. I will choose the complete data and save all changes by selecting the Update Profile button. If I refresh the view of this page after that, you will see that my name now appears in a different form.

The next segment is called Contact Info, which means that it contains information that is of crucial importance for you and all your users. This primarily refers to your email address, which must be completely correct because it is the only way to solve the problem of a forgotten password. In addition, all comments that require approval will be sent to this address automatically, before they appear on the site itself. If you use the same email address on the service called Gravatar, WordPress will use this information to download the corresponding image and connect it to your account. It has already been done for me, and in the next lesson I will show you how I achieved it. I have to draw your attention to the fact that in WordPress it is possible to create only one account for the same email address.

The following field is reserved for the address where your personal website is located. This information will be displayed in your profile, but only on the condition that you have foreseen such a page. The same applies to your biographical information, as their display on the site largely depends on the chosen theme. For example, I will enter a few sentences in this field and select the Update Profile button to record all changes. After that, if I return to the site view and look for the About option in the main menu, it will not be difficult for me to open the page with information about contributors. As you can see, in addition to the name and photo, there is also the text that I entered in my profile a while ago. With some themes, there is a possibility for this information to appear under each contribution, thus giving readers the opportunity to immediately find out more about its author. Of course, if you don’t need it, simply skip this field or remove the existing content.

The last two fields allow you to set and confirm a new password. This means that at any time you can change the parameters that you previously used to log in to the system and thus prevent possible misuse. At the same time, you can also count on a little help, consisting of an automatic check of the new password. In other words, if you enter something in this field that is too similar to your name or some frequently used term, the system will automatically warn you via the Strength indicator function that your new password is not secure enough. In that case, you have to come up with a more complex combination and try to remember it.

In order for WordPress to be able to use all the new parameters, you must finally click on the Update Profile button and complete this process.