Advanced Profile Kit is now in active development for D6. I have a lot of ideas of where I want to take it but I also have a lot of people wanting it to stabalize. So I've decided I'm going to go the same route as I did with Advanced Forum and cut off 1.x with a minimum set of features and then go wild in a 2.x branch.
So I'm looking for some feedback. What features do you consider to be essential before you'd even consider using APK? And then what is your wishlist? Feel free to name anything you like. I won't necessarily code it all but I will go through all the ideas and come up with a plan of what I am able to implement.
Though I do have a lot of my own ideas, I'm going to hold off on posting them. I'd like to hear what other people think first.
Thanks,
Michelle
Comments
Comment mockup
This Mockup (http://drupal.org/node/358623) shows how I would love to see comments. :)
Screenshot: http://i40.tinypic.com/2lj6xb8.png
profile view
And this is a whole Profile view mockup.
Screenshot: http://i42.tinypic.com/2csjwab.png
Nice
APK can already do quite a bit of that but there's some things there that gives me ideas. Thanks for the mockup.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
Your are welcome. :) I think
Your are welcome. :) I think that the profile is a very important part of drupal which was pretty unnoted and I hope that this will change with your APK module. The problem with lots of modules which don't make it into core is that after a while development gets discontinued.
The main thing that Social
The main thing that Social Networks have that Drupal doesn't by default is a synthesis of all the information from the entire site on the profile page. Take Facebook: there are AJAXified tabs across the top that let users prioritize what content they want others to see from their applications. The first tab shows essentially a Guestbook, with the avatar and limited information on the left; the second tab shows information (name, birthday, etc.); the third tab usually shows photos; the fourth other applications. In Drupal it is not enough to add tabs to the user page because tabs (especially non-AJAX ones) are clunky, so we use Panels to arrange information as we want it. The problem, until APK, was that if you didn't know PHP and SQL, there was no way to collect information from different sources and put them together in one panel. But since you (Michelle) have graciously taken it upon yourself to provide the mashup, let's look at the different kinds of content we want to synthesize.
The two most popular types of content for social network profile pages, I would imagine, are Guestbook and Activity. Most people will also want to have some kind of View or other arrangement of users' recent posts. Then there are other modules--Facebook-style Statuses, User Deco, User Badges, User Titles, Organic Groups, User Relationships/Friendlist, Flag, Bio/Nodeprofile/Content Profile... just to list a handful of the ones I run on one of my sites.
Another major issue--the largest one, in my opinion--is that it's obnoxiously difficult for users to edit their information. They have to go to an Edit tab and scroll down until they find what they want, or possibly go to other subtabs if they're using the Profile module. What sites like Facebook get right is that they allow users to simply click on the information on the page where they see it, and they can edit it right there and then without any page-loads or hassle. That would be a great feature in my opinion, although I imagine that that would be difficult to do.
You should get an idea of some of the nice additional things I coded myself for profiles on BabelUp from the attachments (warning: they're big).
Edit: the attachments didn't stick for some reason. Here they are:
Admin on Own Profile
Authenticated User on Another User's Profile
Specific profiles/setups
This is a suggestion I left in this somewhat related post - http://groups.drupal.org/node/4013
Specific profiles/setups that would cater to a specific user type and/or purpose. For instance, there could be a custom set of default user profiles and content creation/recommendation tools for a band, event producer, editor/tastemaker, tv/radio station, etc. Somewhat similar to creating an install profile, but in a modular-profile-centric fashion (now there's some good terminology!). If user profiles were broken down this way, it should make it easier to create custom themes and layouts for each specific purpose.
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
Wishing and dreaming :)
It would be great if could be implemented a sort of "guestbook-wall" module, with limited characters that shows up when you write, facebook´s wall. That´s very cool as a new feature. +1 for that.
Now, there would be geat if there could be some customization inside the about me block, showing something like:
Current viewing profile (and NOT current logged in user´s):
Nº of User´s Posts and link to it list
Nº of User´s friends (and separate a block of his friend´s list, that is already possible)
User´s last active
Now: online visiting/voting/commenting on...
User´s Birthday
User´s Gender
A link the current profile´s owner, to be ready to copy and paste it somewhere else.
And the possibility to turn off whetever stuff you just don´t want in there.
A list of current profile´s owner´s groups he is involved would be nice too.
Some of that stuff probably is already there, but I think one of the hardest issues to get, is to show not the current logged in user´s stuff, but to show the profile´s owner stuff. It is usually with some modules a bit confusing. Happily Views2 is helping with all that...
I think a good and nice example are the profiles in the drupalsn.com site...
BTW, Thanks for creating this discussion!
Rosamunda
.
Almost everything you're asking for already exists...
Thanks
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm trying to take everyone's ideas and come up with some kind of plan. It won't be quick because I only do this part time, but we'll get there. Anyone else have ideas? Keep 'em coming. :)
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
Is this a solo effort or could others get involved?
Is this a solo effort or could others get involved? The profile kit will be a way to build all sorts of profiles? Is the intent to have recipes and/or presets for different profiles? Probably will have a better idea of what this could do if I try it out - http://drupal.org/project/advanced_profile
If there's a way to get others involved, possibly we could create some tasks and use the Drupal Dojo and Dimdim to collaborate. What do you think?
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
.
Well, APK itself is a solo effort but APK is just a gathering point for mostly other peoples' work. Most of the stuff that goes into a profile is provided by other contrib modules. What I'm doing is researching, making bridges and glue, providing some defaults for better profiles out of the box, and likely tutorials for more advanced ones. There's still plenty of work for people to create / improve the modules that APK is assembling.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
Better Privacy and Apps on Profile
Privacy
There is probably no way so far for user to put rss feeds off, pm blocks are full blocks ( all or none)
and "ignore/content blocker" instead of completely "vanishing" the ignored user shows clickable links.
Profile comments
Basic :
- Ajax commenting, A replies to B without leaving her/his profile ( see orkut for a demo )
- User can delete own comment in any profile and others' comment in her/his profile
- Userpoints of B dont get deducted when A deletes B's comment to clean profile
- Header area or the tab shows total no. of comments
- Get Notification of Profile Comment like PM Notification on top of page or live ajax alert (php script alycia / live site orkut has this feature) plus minus email notification
Advanced :
- Two way comment or 1:1 comment or "Wall" feature
- Users can attach inline images to comment ( this is getting popular in actual social nets )
- Administrative choice to show comments in-profile or as tabbed page
- Administrative choice to determine how many comments in each of above case before "more" appears
Admin currently cannot determine n number of comments on profile where n =5 or less than 10
Wall seems to be not possible with existing modules
Friend list
Advanced
- Probably different level of friendships
- Getting Friends feeds on my profile ( eg thumbs of friends' latest photos)
- Bulletin to freinds ( that is : one bulletin post : goes to all friend )
- Administrative choice to determine how x by y ( how many in a ) grid and how many chars to show if its a long name
Groups
General
User can choose theme for her profile ( already module is there )
Profile tags or keywords ( already module is there )
Profile balloon or header ( already module is there )
Profile visits ( already there )
Latest posts differnetiated into new posts and comments ( currently tracker tracks all collectively)
Latest 'n' number of thumbs from album ( already there )
Show my feeds ( n items of n feeds ) on profile ( a tabbed or linked page - see orkut for a demo)
Descriptive facts line bday, asl etc ( already there )
Tabs show no. of comments, no. of photos etc
Profile page show if album is locked/private
Probably user choice to upload a big profile photo and thumb/avtaar for nodes ( probably possible )
fancy stuffs : nudges, badges , testimonials
------------------
Tabs or long, long scroll?
Adminstrative choice to determine how the profile page looks, long scrolls, blocks, tabs -
which to go where ...
Ajaxification
A nice example is invision blog
User is presented with the basic blocks ( admin determines what is basic for their site) which
they can turn off or on and add more "widgets" from drop down lists. These widgets can be simple things like their latest blog posts or image thubnails or really advanec ones like Apps or Gadgets.
Users can also drag and drop to make a top block bottom one or a right block left one, provided admin has enabled such a theme.
Users get "live" notification or audio alerts when there is some profile comment or nudges
The currently absent friend module had some ajax features but now the module page shows "access denied" ......
Nice list!
Thanks for all that. That gives us a good starting point. I'm not going to do a line by line comment at this point but I wanted to mention that friend has been abandoned and unpublished because it has a security hole that went unfixed.
Lots of good stuff on this post. I'm hoping to take some time this weekend to write up a plan of attack, but I already have some ideas of how to do the various parts.
Thanks,
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
First stab at a spec document
Please forgive the horrid HTML. I made an outline in Word and exported it. Here's my first stab at taking what's been said here as well as my own thoughts and putting it all together. If someone has time to clean the HTML, it would be a good start of a wiki. I need to get back to development, now, though, so this is it from me for a bit.
Public profile
The public profile page is the space where the user tells others about himself. This is meant as a landing page for people wanting to know more about the user rather than a page that the user himself uses.
Homepage
The homepage is the landing page for the user’s use. This page needs to be highly configurable, showing the user just what they want. This should be a summary of all their and their friends’ activity on the system as well as anything else they want to track. In D5, this is covered by the MySite module. There is no D6 solution at this time.
Account
This page allows editing of basic account information. Ideally would be split up into core functionality and that provided by contrib modules. In practice, this may only be possible when customizing per site.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
me like
I got a few ideas and suggestion to your post. p.s great job on APK it's the start to something great. Suggestions will be in bold
Privacy states (note: it is assumed that admins can view all)
Theming
Sections (in no particular order)
Author pane (from Author Pane module)
The Author Pane is a block of user information gathered from various sources. What information it contains depends on what contrib modules are installed. This block is customizable via the template file and template preprocess functions.
from user_karma but I don't know what will be the state of that module and others from mercmobily since he quit drupal development but should still fix bugs as he says.
More statuses such as "busy" and "brb" (not implemented)
take a look at onlinestatus which would be a great addition to authorpane, the 6.x port is located at [180826]
This maybe can be taken from activity logs
Show Password from aes
Contact – Profile node fieldgroup
Stats – Profile node fieldgroup
About – Profile node field
Interests – Profile node field
Links – Profile node fieldgroup
Profile visitors (APK or profile visits module)
Guestbook / comment wall (guestbook module; partially implmented)
Share page
addthis good choice.
Activity (activity module; partially implemented)
Blog (core)
Microblog (not implemented)
User tracker
Media gallery
Tags - Interests, books, movies, etc. (taxonomy)
Homepage
The homepage is the landing page for the user’s use. This page needs to be highly configurable, showing the user just what they want. This should be a summary of all their and their friends’ activity on the system as well as anything else they want to track. In D5, this is covered by the MySite module. There is no D6 solution at this time.
Account
This page allows editing of basic account information. Ideally would be split up into core functionality and that provided by contrib modules. In practice, this may only be possible when customizing per site.
Core
Contributed (examples… this section is unlimited)
That's my suggestions, I will have added more but I have to run now..
bending technology to fit businesses.