How to Shape the Profile About Tab in BuddyNext

How to shape the profile About tab in BuddyNext, step by step. The About tab shows one card per profile field group, in the order of your groups. A short answer shows on one line, a web address becomes a link, a multiple choice field becomes chips, and repeating groups such as Work Experience show one block per entry. Change it under BuddyNext, then Members, then Directory, then Profile Fields. The tab is hidden when a member has nothing the viewer may see.

Transcript

In this tutorial you will shape the profile About tab in BuddyNext. It is the tab that lays out everything a member has told the community about themselves. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin. The About tab has no settings screen of its own. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Open the About tab. Read lines, links and chips. Read a repeating section. Shape it from Profile Fields. Then know when it is hidden. Step one. Open the About tab. Sign in as a member, open another member's profile, and click About. Each group of profile fields is a card of its own, in the order the site owner arranged the groups. Here, Basic Info comes first, then Social Links. Step two. Read lines, links and chips. The kind of field decides how it looks. A short answer, such as a date, sits on one line, with its label on the left. A web address becomes a link. It shows the name of the site, and opens in a new tab. And a field with several picks, such as Interests, becomes a row of chips. Step three. Read a repeating section. Work Experience and Education are groups where a member adds one entry after another. Each entry is a block of its own. Each entry has a bold heading, a quiet line of detail under it with the date, and the description below as a paragraph. Step four. Shape it from Profile Fields. Now the site owner. In your WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, then Members, then Directory, and click the Profile Fields tab. Every group here is a card on the About tab. Add a group, and a new card appears. Rename a field, and its label changes. You never choose a layout. The field type you pick does that. One thing to know. The name, headline and bio, and any field set to show in the profile header, appear at the top of the profile, so About does not repeat them. Step five. Know when it is hidden. Back as a member. This profile has no filled field to show, so it has no About tab at all. The tabs go from Posts straight to Replies. The same goes for privacy. A field the viewer is not allowed to see is left out, and a card with nothing left in it is not shown. So two people can see a different About tab on the same profile. That is all five. The About tab opened, lines, links and chips read, a repeating section read, the tab shaped from Profile Fields, and the hidden case explained. Your members' profiles now read the way you planned them. Next in this series: Edit a member from the admin.