How to use Advanced Profile Fields

How to use Advanced Profile Fields

Note: If you want more information about Advanced Profile Fields, how to enable them, and what they are, please refer to Profile Fields.

Adding a text Profile Field

Once you have the Advanced Profile Fields option enabled, go to: Admin > Configuration > Features and Options... > Profile Fields. At the bottom of the page you will see the "Custom Profile Fields" box. Click the "New Field" button.

Fill in the "Name:" and "Description:" fields according to the Profile Field you want to add. When you arrive at the "Choose Placement:" field, ensure that you select "Standard (with title)" or "Above Signature" from the drop down menu. The Profile Field will be displayed at the end of the poster information section or above the user's signature, depending on the option selected. It will also be displayed on the profile of each user. You can fill in the rest of fields as required for the use of the Profile Field.

Adding an icon as a Profile Field

To display a Profile Field as an icon, follow the same steps as for Adding a Text Profile Field until you reach the "Choose Placement:" field, where you need to choose "With Icons" from the drop down menu. It will be displayed next to the Profile, Email, and PM icons in the poster information.

At this point, it is necessary to add some HTML code within the box to the right of "Show Enclosed Within Text (Optional):". The variables that can be used are the following: {INPUT}, {SCRIPTURL}, {IMAGES_URL} and {DEFAULT_IMAGES_URL}.

The code to add in the box is: <a href="http://website.com/{INPUT}"><img src="{DEFAULT_IMAGES_URL}/icon.gif" alt="{INPUT}" /></a>

• Now, you can edit the code according to your needs:
  1. Edit "http://website.com/{INPUT}": If you want members to be able to add someone to Skype by clicking the icon, you should replace it with skype:{INPUT}. If you want members to be redirected to the user's Twitter profile, add: http://twitter.com/{INPUT}. These are just a couple of examples of the options available to you.
  2. Edit "{DEFAULT_IMAGES_URL}": If you are using the default forum theme, use "{DEFAULT_IMAGES_URL}" to select the image from Themes/default/images. If you are not using the default theme set on your forum, use "{IMAGES_URL}" to select the image from Themes/Name of the Theme/images.
  3. Edit "icon.gif" according to the name of the icon you want to add.

The "alt" attribute at the end of the code is used to display an alternate text if the image fails to load, so if there is any problem loading the image, the information will still be displayed. This is because the attribute must be set as "{INPUT}".