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, navigate 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, be sure it is marked as "Standard (with title)" or "Above Signature". It will be displayed at the end of the poster information section or above the user's signature, depending on the option selected. You can fill in the rest of fields as required for the use of the Profile Field.

Also, it will be displayed on each user profile.

Adding an icon as a Profile Field

To display a Profile Field as an icon, go to the Adding a Custom Profile Field page (Admin > Configuration > Features and Options... > Profile Fields). Fill in the "Name:" and "Description:" fields according to the Profile Field you want to add. Once you reach the "Choose Placement:" field, be sure it is marked as "With Icons". 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. Search the field "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, then 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 load fails, so, if there is any problem loading the image, the information will still be displayed. That's because the attribute must be set as "{INPUT}".