Allowing HTML in Wordpress Profile Descriptions

This is a short, technical post on how to solve a problem with Wordpress. I realize it will only apply to some, but it is the answer to those who need it.

The problem is that the profile field for authors in Wordpress is very limiting, by default. It strips all HTML out of the field, which means you cannot include links, images, even basic formatting. In my opinion, this is really stupid and I don’t know why the Wordpress guys decided to do that. Unfortunately, the way they did it makes use of the filter system in Wordpress. To my knowledge, then, you cannot undo it with a plug-in (I may be wrong). The good news is that it is really easy to stop the filter from working.

To do this, open up /wp-includes/registration.php in a text editor. Then, find the following code:

$description = apply_filters('pre_user_description', $description);

Comment it out by putting two slashes in front of it, making it:

//$description = apply_filters('pre_user_description', $description);

This is a quick and dirty way to allow anything into the author description field in Wordpress.

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