How to remove the default author profile fields in WordPress

When working on a client’s website you want the back-end to be as clutter-free as possible to avoid having to explain what certain things mean. This recently was the case when I was working on a WordPress website. I didn’t want the bother the client with fields for AIM, Jabber / Google Talk or Yahoo IM. Removing these fields was really easy to do.

You can just paste the following code in your theme’s functions.php.

add_filter('user_contactmethods','remove_profile_fields', 10, 1);
function remove_profile_fields($contactmethods) {
	unset($contactmethods['aim']);
	unset($contactmethods['jabber']);
	unset($contactmethods['yim']);
	return $contactmethods;
}

If you want to add fields and options to WordPress’ user profiles I suggest you take a look at Register Plus Redux.