[RFC] List most recent posts on profile page

[Oleg]

I agree with naderman too. Also, the way the user details are displayed is not that good either.

Maybe a column in the left with the user info and a bigger column to show that user recent activity would be better, like this http://www.theverge.com/users/nilaypatel

This version simply deletes everything other than posts and blurb from the profile.

[ecwpa]

The reasons to not add a user's post listing to their profile page would be:

1. We link users' post counts in viewtopic and memberlist to the search. Therefore in order to see what someone posted you would click those links directly and not go to the user's profile.

That's why user's activity should be part of the profile, not a search. You have to admit that after you click on it, there's no way to know where you are.

1. We might have other information about the user in their profile, such as topics they started. How do we decide between showing a user's posts and their started topics in their profile? What if the posts are already directly accessible from viewtopic/memberlist as described in the previous paragraph?

Lets the administrator decide. A simple selectbox with "recent topics", "recent posts", etc.

For the tabbed profile (http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/tabbed_profiles/), it seems to me that the entire profile already fits onto one page, therefore splitting it into tabs creates work for users for no benefit.

Regarding bringing post search into profile under tabs - why? Instead of giving the whole page to the search UI you will have half of the page taken up by profile chrome (which now you don't care about) and search results will be only given the remaining half.

I don't have a solid argument about this but, maybe the phpBB team could run a study on the board and see what are the most clicked parts of the user profile. That way you could be sure if this proporsal is actually popular or not. I'm possitive this is the most common thing users do on the profile page so, it should be considered.

[Danielx64]

Ok, I have a question for all of you, what would you do if a RFC get approved for:

Listing the last 5 posts on a users profile
Listing the last 5 topics on a users profile
Listing the person's friends on a users profile.

How are you going to fit all that on the screen without much scolling? The screen is 1024 by 768.

[ecwpa]

Well, yeah. That's why I don't understand why people are against tabs. For the current page it doesn't make sense but if more information is added then they're going to be really usefull.

[naderman]

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

[Oleg]

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

Actually I did not, I used the "new post" link and jumped right to your post.

The issue I think is in having to scroll through content you don't want to see to get to the content that you do want to see. Especially if you know ahead of time that you'll have unwanted content taking up a large part of the screen.

Compare:

1. I open a topic, I read through it scrolling as I'm reading posts.

2. Board has a huge header taking up half the screen height. I have to ignore it on every single page and scroll some pages that would otherwise not require scrolling if the header was of reasonable size.

My issue with putting post list so low that you have to scroll to see it (and you know that you have to scroll) is that doing this is pointless. If I always have to scroll I might as well press a link that says "list user's posts".

But, some people will have enough screen resolution that they currently have empty space on the profile page. And for those people putting recent posts on the profile page instead of having empty space there is very reasonable.

If we have a link instead of the list for posts then it's trivial to also add a link that says "list topics user started". If we have a list then fitting another list is a problem. Or we have to use tabs in which case I have to click a tab to see the topics, but that's the same thing if we didn't put lists in profile to begin with.

Another issue here might be that different people want to see different things in the profile. E.g. the blurb and posts version - that version has no content that we currently have in our profile (save for overall post count and avatar?).

This unfortunately is a bit of a bike shedding discussion. I would like to propose creating some mockups of the possible versions but at the same time I think we should have a consensus as to what to do.

[ecwpa]

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

Like Oleg, I'm not against it either. And, since you mention it, I see a lot of free space on profile pages, recent post could easily fit on the bottom.

I like tabs better, since we could show more than just recent post but that could be a mod later.

[callumacrae]

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

scrolling is infinitely better than having to click anything, imo

[DavidIQ]

I think that could/should be left to the individual style developers IMO. Just make it one page in the base style and let the style authors do whatever they want with the list (tabs, lightbox, whatever).

[Danielx64]

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

WHAT, why on earth did you take my post out of context? I mean, it ok to have tabs on the UCP, MCP and the admin area, but on view topic? What are you on about?

I really don't understand this obsession against scrolling? Like just look at this viewtopic page you just scrolled all the way down to read my post. Imagine we would put every single post on its own page so they would fit your screen, that would be entirely unusable - even if they were loaded all at once and it wasn't a speed issue.

Actually I did not, I used the "new post" link and jumped right to your post.

The issue I think is in having to scroll through content you don't want to see to get to the content that you do want to see. Especially if you know ahead of time that you'll have unwanted content taking up a large part of the screen.

Compare:

1. I open a topic, I read through it scrolling as I'm reading posts.

2. Board has a huge header taking up half the screen height. I have to ignore it on every single page and scroll some pages that would otherwise not require scrolling if the header was of reasonable size.

My issue with putting post list so low that you have to scroll to see it (and you know that you have to scroll) is that doing this is pointless. If I always have to scroll I might as well press a link that says "list user's posts".

But, some people will have enough screen resolution that they currently have empty space on the profile page. And for those people putting recent posts on the profile page instead of having empty space there is very reasonable.

If we have a link instead of the list for posts then it's trivial to also add a link that says "list topics user started". If we have a list then fitting another list is a problem. Or we have to use tabs in which case I have to click a tab to see the topics, but that's the same thing if we didn't put lists in profile to begin with.

Another issue here might be that different people want to see different things in the profile. E.g. the blurb and posts version - that version has no content that we currently have in our profile (save for overall post count and avatar?).

This unfortunately is a bit of a bike shedding discussion. I would like to propose creating some mockups of the possible versions but at the same time I think we should have a consensus as to what to do.

We can fix all that in several stepts

A: Aave both tab and mon tab view profile. Allow the user to decide what they want to use. Allow the admin to overide users settings like they can with styles.

B: Allow admins to control what version of the list topics and posts are displayed on user profile. Would this be the full post or a short version with the first 250 words or so.

Now in both case, phpbb should not display any more that 5 or 10 topics and post made. This is to keep the server load down. Also this data could be updated say every 5 minutes.

I think that could/should be left to the individual style developers IMO. Just make it one page in the base style and let the style authors do whatever they want with the list (tabs, lightbox, whatever).

I bet if that happen, someone will make a prosilver reloaded theme/skin.