Display and Allow users to edit their own profiles

Question

I'm working on a site that would have different categories of users, and each user will have his own user profile page with a vanity URL, which he can share with others.

The users are divided into three categories:

• Admins
• Type 1 (Allow them to edit their profiles)
• Type 2 (Allow them to contact Type 1 users)

Here's where I am stuck:

• I'm not able to arrive at a solution which would allow the user to edit his profile page, and add content to it (Like his latest presentation at a conference and such).
• I'm not able to arrive at a solution which would allow the regular users (Type 2) to search for Type 1 users based on their meta (like country or city).

It would be great if someone could help me out in this.

Answer 1

One way to do it is by creating a CPT for user profiles, and creating one "post" of that type per each user. Remove the user's ability to add or remove osts and let him edit that post. This will make searching easier as you simply restrict the search for the specific CPT.