How to Simplify WordPress Profiles By Removing Personal Options

This is a handy quick hack that will make the profile page within WordPress only display the fields relevant to a user’s profile. The hack removes the personal options at the top of the page, including the ability to disable the visual editor, change the admin color scheme, enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation, and show or hide the admin bar when viewing the site and/or when in the dashboard.

Add this code to the functions.php file of your theme. It will “visually” remove the options so that they no longer appear on the profile edit page.

function hide_personal_options(){
echo "\n" . '<script type="text/javascript">jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $(\'form#your-profile > h3:first\').hide(); $(\'form#your-profile > table:first\').hide(); $(\'form#your-profile\').show(); });</script>' . "\n";
}
add_action('admin_head','hide_personal_options');

Here’s what you’ll see after you’ve implemented the hack:

Credit for this little hack goes to our friends at wpsnipp.com, originally posted by Kevin Chard.

Why would you want to remove the personal options?

This hack isn’t necessarily for everyone, but if you’re setting up WordPress with the most minimal dashboard possible, this is one safe and easy thing to remove. If your users are heavily dependent on the visual editor, then you don’t want them tinkering around in there, accidentally turning it off and wondering what happened. Also, if your site relies on the admin bar for navigation and you don’t want anyone turning it off, this hack will prevent users from disabling it.

When you want to keep it simple in the admin dashboard, this is a hack you’ll want to consider. Not every website needs its profiles to have so many options. Sometimes keeping it simple will lend itself a better user experience. And a better user experience makes for a better website.