[End user][User] Profile control

[Lurttinen]

Hello, It's me!
Social networking sites seem to be a trend of the day. Fast way to allow users to communicate with friends, share pictures and whatnots.
Difference between a networking site and a discussion forum is obvious. Where discussion forum is focused on the community and their interactions. Social networks focus on the single user and what he/she has to say.
In a way, social network page is a huge profile page on even larger discussion forum. It is just missing the forum bit.

The amount of control they give you how you present your profile has to be respected. Users seem to like it.
I'm not trying to turn discussion forum into facebook or twitter clone, but rather take some aspects and use them on a forum.

For example; (Aiming high on purpose)
Allow users to set a custom background image. Either by selecting from list or upload a pic of their own.
"What are you thinking" and let your friends comment it. (Configurable option to let friends or everyone to see/reply)
MODifications might ad something more, like a game or calendar for friends to make and share plans with other friends.
Allow users to change border colors, if there are any. Maybe even re arrange the whole page by deleting bits they do not want to have.
etc...

I believe static profile has seen its days.
The ability to edit this on the fly would also be clean and swift way to organize your profile.

[code reader]

if i understand you correctly, you are not talking about letting users control how their own posts look or how their "mini-profile" look, but rather how their "profile" (i.e., the page you reach when you press on the user Nick or avatar) looks.

not arguing with your post, just trying to make sure i understand you.

i think the "user profile" can be thought of as made of two separate parts:
the UCP which is basically a UI to control how the forum behaves for this user, and
The page anyone else sees when they click on the user's avatar or nick.

let's call the second part, instead of "profile", "user X home-page".
well, (again, if i understand you correctly), your idea boils down to: "Allow users to edit their home page".
while i think this is an excellent idea, i also think that such a feature should be left to a plugin, and left out of the core.
however, i do agree that if executed right, this might become one of the most popular plugins ever.

(and see my other post "General Principles", the distinction between "core" and "not core" can be thought of as a packaging question. in this sense, i think this feature is worthy of being packaged with the core system)


peace.

[Sam]

I personally do not want to see full blown profiles, though a small 'about me' section is always a nice feature.

[naderman]

Seems like a reasonable idea for a standard plugin. I don't see any particular needs for the architecture arise from this aside from what is already being discussed in other topics. So I'd leave it at that for now and come back to it once we actually have something to work with

[onehundredandtwo]

phpBB is neither a calendar, nor a gallery nor a kitchen sink; it is simply a bulletin board.

If plugins are possibly going to be easier to install, I say keep it as a plugin. And what ToonArmy said. ^

[idiotnesia]

For user panel what I'd like to see is just the more advanced custom profile field. Everything must be custom

[bobtheman]

i agree, i think we should empower the registered members with the ability to create and customise as they please.

1. Better functionality for friends list.
2. UCP communication improvements
3. UCP transformed into a user homepage, that includes a settings page for all the current/new UCP settings
3. ability for users to post topics/threads/posts/short messages on their "homepage", and other users to comment. manage friends etc etc


"full blown profiles" should be up to the user/admin to decide. I think we should have full profiles/member homepages... and it would be up to the user to use it or not.

[jwxie]

I think profile control should be minimize. The current 3.0 profile is relatively fine. However, from the S.N.S perspective, what we can do is incorporate the idea of "status".

I think it'd be interesting to add status to our profile. It is not the signature (which currently IS for forum). To me, signature means a static feature - you don't change it all the time.

People comment on your status too.

[ToonArmy]

I see no reason to reinvent the wheel twitter, facebook, identi.ca, etc. are much more widely used services for this sort of thing and time would be better spend integrating with them. (Not that I'm suggesting this would be a core feature)

[bobtheman]

Seems like a reasonable idea for a standard plugin. I don't see any particular needs for the architecture arise from this aside from what is already being discussed in other topics. So I'd leave it at that for now and come back to it once we actually have something to work with

User profiles should be passed off onto a plugin feature? I cant believe my eyes. We should be encouraging community building, and a user profile is essential. Profiles should be built into core, left to the user to decided if they want to utilize it. If the users want a full blown profile its there for them to use, but we are not forcing anyone to. relying on plugins to extend something as simple as a user profile is insane. We need to discuss in detail what we want as a community for user profiles, and have polls with the entire community as a whole for a better understanding of what the end users want. I will make the call early, i bet the majority of users from the support forums and dev forums combined want a new and improved user profile that compared to what we currently have would be considered full blown. The key is leaving it up to the user.