Just like the post meta system, WordPress has a powerful user meta system that allows developers to store additional “meta” information about the registered users in the database. This meta information can be just about anything you want it to be, and can serve a variety of purposes. At the time of writing this tutorial, I’m using the user meta system in my Pro version of Restrict Content to greatly expand the functionality of the plugin.
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We’ve talked offline previously about doing this sort of work. The site I’m working on now, would like to capture alot of data about our users. Things like address, retiree status, a thing called salary schedule (if the user is willing to give such info). So, if I’m reading this correctly, we need to capture all this info when the user signs up for the website, correct? The Login Form would need to have all this info – so we can push it to the database.? Then when you are running your sql – what are you pulling the data into? A WordPress form or a spreadsheet? I really need to dig deeper into this. Thanks again for your tutorials – very timely and helpful!
All of the “meta data” can be set during registration using the update_user_meta() function. You could extend the fields created in the Registration Form Tutorial to include fields for the meta data, then update it when the user is created.
When we query the users we’re not pulling them into anything really, just displaying them on the site. Though you could do whatever you wanted with them.