How to remove Biography from user profile admin page

I would like to remove or hide the Biography input field from the profile page. How do you do this? I already removed some contact methods from this page, but I’m not sure how to get rid of the biography.

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

There is no dedicated hook – user management is a low priority in WordPress. You have to use output buffering (yes, not nice).

Here is a simple demonstration how this could be done:

add_action( 'personal_options', array ( 'T5_Hide_Profile_Bio_Box', 'start' ) );

/**
 * Captures the part with the biobox in an output buffer and removes it.
 */
class T5_Hide_Profile_Bio_Box
{
    /**
     * Called on 'personal_options'.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public static function start()
    {
        $action = ( IS_PROFILE_PAGE ? 'show' : 'edit' ) . '_user_profile';
        add_action( $action, array ( __CLASS__, 'stop' ) );
        ob_start();
    }

    /**
     * Strips the bio box from the buffered content.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public static function stop()
    {
        $html = ob_get_contents();
        ob_end_clean();

        // remove the headline
        $headline = __( IS_PROFILE_PAGE ? 'About Yourself' : 'About the user' );
        $html = str_replace( '<h2>' . $headline . '</h2>', '', $html );

        // remove the table row
        $html = preg_replace( '~<tr>s*<th><label for="description".*</tr>~imsUu', '', $html );
        print $html;
    }
}

You can download the code as a standalone plugin: Plugin Remove Bio Box.

The password fields are now under Contact Info … if you don’t like that, add a headline in stop() – and take care for I18n. 😉

Method 2

Since the recent class change this works:

add_action( 'personal_options', array ( 'T5_Hide_Profile_Bio_Box', 'start' ) );

/**
 * Captures the part with the biobox in an output buffer and removes it.
 *
 * @author Thomas Scholz, <<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="7f161119103f0b100c1c1710511b1a">[email protected]</a>>
 *
 */
class T5_Hide_Profile_Bio_Box
{
    /**
     * Called on 'personal_options'.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public static function start()
    {
        $action = ( IS_PROFILE_PAGE ? 'show' : 'edit' ) . '_user_profile';
        add_action( $action, array ( __CLASS__, 'stop' ) );
        ob_start();
    }

    /**
     * Strips the bio box from the buffered content.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public static function stop()
    {
        $html = ob_get_contents();
        ob_end_clean();

        // remove the headline
        $headline = __( IS_PROFILE_PAGE ? 'About Yourself' : 'About the user' );
        $html = str_replace( '<h3>' . $headline . '</h3>', '', $html );

        // remove the table row
        $html = preg_replace( '~<tr class="user-description-wrap">s*<th><label for="description".*</tr>~imsUu', '', $html );
        print $html;
    }
}

Method 3

The simplest and most lightweight solution is to use CSS to just hide it from view.

.user-description-wrap {
   display: none;
}

Method 4

Building on the previous answers, here is what I’m using to remove the parts of the User page I don’t want:

$pagesToAffect = [
    '/wp-admin/user-edit.php',
    '/wp-admin/profile.php'
];

if (isset($PHP_SELF) && in_array($PHP_SELF, $pagesToAffect)) {
    add_action('admin_head', [UserProfileCleaner::class, 'start']);
    add_action('admin_footer', [UserProfileCleaner::class, 'finish']);
    add_filter('user_contactmethods',[UserProfileCleaner::class, 'hideInstantMessaging'],10000,1);
}

class UserProfileCleaner {
    public static function start() {
        ob_start(function($buffer) {
            // Personal Options
            if (!IS_PROFILE_PAGE) {
                $startHeading = 'Personal Options';
                $pattern = "@<(h[0-9]) ?[^>]*?>".preg_quote(_x($startHeading))."</\1 ?>@is";
                preg_match($pattern, $buffer, $start, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

                $endHeading = 'Name';
                $pattern = "@<(h[0-9]) ?[^>]*?>".preg_quote(_x($endHeading))."</\1 ?>@is";
                preg_match($pattern, $buffer, $end, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);

                if (isset($start[0][1]) && isset($end[0][1]) && $start[0][1]<$end[0][1]) {
                    $buffer = substr($buffer, 0, $start[0][1]).substr($buffer,$end[0][1]);
                }
            }

            $buffer = self::removeSectionHeading($buffer, 'Name');
            $buffer = self::removeSectionHeading($buffer, 'Contact Info');

            $buffer = self::removeSectionHeading($buffer, 'Additional Capabilities');
            $buffer = self::removeSectionRow($buffer, 'Capabilities');

            $buffer = self::removeSectionHeading($buffer, 'Forums');

            // About / Bio
            $heading = IS_PROFILE_PAGE ? 'About Yourself' : 'About the user';
            $buffer = self::removeStandardSection($buffer, $heading);

            // Yoast
            $heading = 'Yoast SEO Settings';
            $buffer = self::removeStandardSection($buffer, $heading);

            $heading = 'Memberships';
            $pattern = "@<(h[0-9]) ?[^>]*?>".preg_quote(_x($heading))."</\1 ?>.*?</p>@is";
            $buffer = preg_replace($pattern, "", $buffer, 1);

            return $buffer;
        });
    }

    private static function removeStandardSection($buffer, $heading) {
        $pattern = "@<(h[0-9]) ?[^>]*?>".preg_quote(_x($heading))."</\1 ?>.*?</table>@is";
        return preg_replace($pattern, "", $buffer, 1);
    }

    private static function removeSectionHeading($buffer, $heading) {
        $pattern = "@<(h[0-9]) ?[^>]*?>".preg_quote(_x($heading))."</\1 ?>@is";
        return preg_replace($pattern, "", $buffer, 1);
    }

    function removeSectionRow($buffer, $heading) {
        $pattern = "@<tr ?[^>]*?>[^<]*?<th ?[^>]*?>[^<]*?".preg_quote(_x($heading))."[^<]*?</th ?[^>]*?>.*?</tr ?>@is";
        return preg_replace($pattern, "", $buffer, 1);
    }

    public static function finish() {
        ob_end_flush();
    }

    public static function hideInstantMessaging( $contactmethods ) {
        unset($contactmethods['googleplus']);
        unset($contactmethods['twitter']);
        unset($contactmethods['facebook']);
        return $contactmethods;
    }
}

It’s still reliant on the structure of the HTML, but it works for me.

Method 5

If you add the below code to your functions.php file, it will remove the bio section for all languages of a multi-language site:

//remove the bio
function remove_plain_bio($buffer) {
    $titles = array('#<h3>'._x('About Yourself').'</h3>#','#<h3>'._x('About the user').'</h3>#');
    $buffer=preg_replace($titles,'<h3>'._x('Password').'</h3>',$buffer,1);
    $biotable='#<h3>'._x('Password').'</h3>.+?<table.+?/tr>#s';
    $buffer=preg_replace($biotable,'<h3>'._x('Password').'</h3> <table class="form-table">',$buffer,1);
    return $buffer;
}
function profile_admin_buffer_start() { ob_start("remove_plain_bio"); }
function profile_admin_buffer_end() { ob_end_flush(); }
add_action('admin_head', 'profile_admin_buffer_start');
add_action('admin_footer', 'profile_admin_buffer_end');

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0