User Fields meta_key

The default meta keys used by the plugin were changed in 3.2 to coincide with what is used in WooCommerce.

A couple of important notes:

• On a certain level, meta keys are meaningless – all they are is the tag by which a piece of data is recognized in the database. So storing data as “city” or “billing_city” or even “1234” is all the same – as long as the label displayed to the user means something (i.e. it just says “City”).
• When a meta key is not meaningless is when you are trying to integrate with another application. WooCommerce is extremely popular and common these days, and a lot of people are using WooCommerce along with WP-Members. It made sense to simply start a clean install with meta keys that matched up with what WooCommerce is using.
• WP-Members has not changed with regards to the fact that it really does not matter what meta keys you use for any custom fields (i.e. fields that are not native to WP). So you can keep the default fields it installs, or delete them and create your own. If you’re not integrating fields with another plugin, it doesn’t matter. And keep in mind that even if you’re using WP-Members by itself, the field meta doesn’t really affect what the data is nor what/how it is displayed to the user (even if that user is an administrator).

All that being said, what is important to me is to clarify exactly what you did when updating. Was this a clean (i.e. new) install? WP-Members never changes settings when updating an existing install (at least it shouldn’t), so if there were settings already installed from a pre-3.2.x release, fields should not be changed when updating. It should only happen if the install is new (which includes if you deactivated a previous version and then ran the “delete” option via the plugin panel since that would wipe out previous settings).

Chad. Right now we are in the process of moving to wp-members. We are just a small 50 member service club all volunteer with only dues as money. We have just one website. In the effort to start using wp-members on the site I have been using my personal website as a development bed, before making the changes on the club site.
We have about 190 records in our home grow sql roster that I have been doing data mapping for import, which is why I am looking at meta_keys and noticed the change.
I did the latest update 3.2.1 on my personal website. Our club website still has the older 3.2.0.1 which was upgraded from the prior 3.1 release. So I am comparing the 3.2.0.1 on the club website to the 3.2.1 on my personal website.
So to answer your question, the fields were changed. Based on your answer, it doesn’t matter to me other changing my import mapping. We have no use for anything like woo-commerce or extensions since that is not our purpose. I hope that helps you out for the other users.
Thank you, Kevin

The fields you have on the club website didn’t/won’t change because you have an existing install. Actually, the same is true with the one on your personal website. Ssince the one on your personal web site was a clean install from one of the 3.2 versions, that’s why the keys were different than what you saw on the club site.

Just to clarify, no matter what fields are on any install, default or otherwise, once you’ve set them up, any plugin upgrade is not going to change existing fields.