How to remove Biography from user profile admin page

Question

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.

Answer 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. ;)

Answer 2

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

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

Answer 3

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, <[email protected]>
 *
 */
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;
    }
}

Answer 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.

Answer 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');