Private data

The profile fields offered by WordPress are common to every user type. So the existing user roles and custom user roles will have the same set of fields inside the profile. In general, we have different user roles in web applications with different access levels. So the custom fields required for doctors are not the same as the custom fields needed for web developers.

Let's consider the user roles in our forum application. We have two user roles, called free members and premium members. Premium members pay a fee for the application and hence they should have premium features compared to the free members. In such scenarios, we provide a basic set of profile fields for free members and an advanced set of custom fields for premium members. So we need to keep these custom fields private for different user types. Also, some users may want to keep their profile data private from other users and only visible to administrators.

In general, web applications that use custom profile fields require advanced field management features for keeping data private and making them accessible by certain user levels with required permissions. There are many plugins that offer such features and hence it's wise to use them in web applications, unless you have time to create your own.