profiles

allowing user to add content, photos without giving access

Seems like you are using the plugin fancier author or fanciest author. Either modify the setting in there or disable the plugin. Hope that solves your problem

Is your profile.php is a file inside your theme. If so it’s need to be a page template. Then you need to add query vars and add rewrite rule for that query vars . please read this blog http://www.rlmseo.com/blog/passing-get-query-string-parameters-in-wordpress-url/ for reference

Did something change in regards to custom profile fields in WP 4.8.2 (mine have disappeared)?

You could try the following. Add to your functions.php function admin_profile_menu() { remove_menu_page(‘profile.php’); add_menu_page( “NEWLABEL”, “NEWLABEL”, “”, “profile.php”, “”, “dashicons-admin-users”, “40” ); } add_action(‘admin_menu’, ‘admin_profile_menu’);

Replace a specific profile field

For all author meta details you can use the_author_meta http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_author_meta <a href=”https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/37317/<?php the_author_meta(“user_url’, $current_user->ID);?>”><?php the_author_meta(‘display_name’, $current_user->ID);?></a> If its for user meta use get_user_meta http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_user_meta <a href=”https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/37317/<?php echo get_user_meta($current_user->ID,”user_url’);?>”><?php echo get_user_meta($current_user->ID, ‘display_name’);?></a>

Put this code in the functions.php file. add_action( ‘show_user_profile’, ‘my_show_extra_profile_fields’ ); add_action( ‘edit_user_profile’, ‘my_show_extra_profile_fields’ ); function my_show_extra_profile_fields( $user ) { ?> <h3>Go back to home</h3> <table class=”form-table”> <tr> <td> <a href=”https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/56172/<?php echo home_url(); ?>” title=”Go back”>Home</a> </td> </tr> </table> <?php } Check this tutorial for more detail. You can put any mark up you want, … Read more

Not a solution this one, but you maybe be able to use it. If you add ?author=X (x = id), the URL fetches the Author profile based on the ID. Example: https://example.com/?author=152