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Interesting idea. I'm hoping @AlphaGolf will pick up this thread as he did sterling work on the extended fields enhancement. AG? You there?

Yeah I'm there... 

You can access WPS extended fields from anywhere on your WordPress site, in a theme page template or in any other plugin. Now that they are stored using WP metadata, you need to use the WordPress get_user_meta function, called with the slug of the extended field prefixed with 'symposium_extended_'. So for example if you gave to your extended field the slug 'my_slug', get_user_meta($uid, 'symposium_extended_my_slug', true) will return the value stored in the extended field. Reciprocally, you can also update the value using update_user_meta with similar params.

You could also do the reverse, that is: link an extended field with any WP metadata that might have been created by another plugin. For instance I use Register Plus Redux for the management of registration. I have added a few fields that are displayed on the registration page, which are then stored as WP metadata by this plugin. On WP Symposium side, I have created extended fields linked to these metadata, so that they are shown on the user's WPS Profile page.

However, I must stress that the major issue with Register Plus Redux is that it doesn't seem to be supported anymore, it's not even stored in the WP repo. So I would take any suggestion regarding a plugin in this context...

AG

Awesomely detailed response @AlphaGolf, if we can put an example together this should go on the tutorials (how to add fields to registration page). Can use your favourite registration plugin 

Thank you so much for such a detail reply.

The solution is working great for the fields declared as text and text areas in the Synmposium profile setting page. However, the fields declared as check box or list are not updated. For example I have a gender field declared as list in the symposium profile. Following is the code snippers I added in my functions.php file.

<p>
<label> Gender </label>
<select name = "gender">
<option value ="">Select...</option>
<option value = "1"> Male</option>
<option value ="2"> Female</option>
</select>
</p>

function register_extra_fields($user_id, $password="", $meta=array())  {

$userdata = array();
$userdata['ID'] = $user_id;

update_user_meta( $user_id, 'symposium_extended_gender',$_POST['gender'] );

}

I have also tried the following

<p>
<label> Gender </label>
<select name = "gender" id ="gender">
<option value="1" <?php selected( '1', get_user_meta( $user->ID,symposium_extended_gender,true); ?>>Male</option>
<option value="2" <?php selected( '2', get_user_meta( $user->ID,symposium_extended_gender,true); ?>>Female</option>
</select>
</p>

I also tried the following but it didnt work out

<p>
<label>Gender</label>
<select name = "gender" id ="gender">
<option value="1"  <?php selected( '1', get_user_meta( $user->ID,symposium_extended_gender) );?>>Male</option>
<option value="2" <?php selected( '2', get_user_meta(  $user->ID,symposium_extended_gender ) );?>>Female</option>
</select>
</p>

I have found out that the value is correctly stored in the extended fields in the database when the registration form is submitted. However the value displayed on the profile page is the default value.

Anyhelp in this regard would be highly appreciated

You probably need quotes around symposium_extended_gender. You should also try calling get_user_meta with its third parameter, and set it to true so that the return value isn't an array.

Thank you for you reply.

I checked and the value is correctly stored in the database. However, the profile page displays the default value. I have also tried to update the extended fields from the profile page but still it displays the default value. This is only with the drop down extended fields.

A quick follow-up to this one...

It turns out that the culprit was a space character between list default values, after the comma: "Male, Female".  @simongoodchild, wouldn't it be worth trimming those values, both when the first of the list is set as default (ajax/symposium_profile_functions.php:1165) and of course when the whole list is exploded (ajax/symposium_profile_functions.php:1209) ?

Secondly, there's a bug in that the read-only flag isn't considered in the WPS Profile page. Other types have a test if ($extension->readonly) { but not the List. Again, that's in ajax/symposium_profile_functions.php around line 1205.  Note that the display of Extended Fields as lists in the WP profile page is OK (i.e., greyed out meaning not editable by the user).

AG