Wintreath Regional Community
The Frozen Village of Fourneshore - Chats and Discussions => Admin Bureau - Technical and Moderation => Topic started by: Wintermoot on June 28, 2014, 09:32:15 PM
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As a community-based region, one of the technical issues I've long-had with this and many other forums out there is the shitty default profile. You go to a person's profile to learn more about them, but our profiles do a horrible job of that or of anything else other than rehashing generic forum stats. I want to eventually transform our user profiles into an area of the website where you can express who you are, and show off what you're doing in our region. I don't want to remake Facebook (forum profile comments = eww), but doesn't it make sense that your profile would be where other members of the community could get to know more about you and see the things you're involved in and have accomplished here?
I'm very happy to be starting on this project, and be able to show you the start of it, at least as a preview: http://wintreath.com/index.php?part=profile&id=1 (http://wintreath.com/index.php?part=profile&id=1)
That is the link to my profile, but everyone has one! To find it, take the url above and plug your user ID into it. If you need help finding it, let me know and I'll get you a link. In the meantime, let's break down the new profiles.
Sidebar
The sidebar has your username, avatar, and user title on top. These things identify you, and are one of the few ways you can set yourself apart on the forums at the moment, so of course we want to bring those in. Below that is a profile menu...currently you can send a PM if you are able to, or edit the profile if you are the profile is yours or if you're a forum administrator. Below that is an admin-only box that gives us some info we need to be able to know to do things like security checks.
The Stats Bar
At the top of the other side is the stats bar, handy for those little stats most people are only interested in at a glance. Currently you can see your primary user role, post count, and karma count, although this will change during development. For example, post count will probably be replaced with something else, because I don't think it's a stat most people care about much...besides, it's on every post one makes. :P
The Main Area
This is where all the important content will be shown...when you open up the profile, you see an introduction message. You can use it to talk about yourself, what you're doing in the region, anything you want someone to see when they open your profile. In the future, there will be options to view other kinds of things in this area, but we're just starting out here.
Profile Edit
As mentioned before, you have a link to edit your profile with! Currently, you can edit your user title (you can also edit this in the old profile), or your introduction message (exclusive only to the new one). For both, you can utilize BB code just like you can on the forums.
For now, this remains a very simple work in progress, but I think it's a great start to this project...in time, these profiles will be linked into so many things, from your familial houses to your Citizenship nations to everything in between. I will post in this topic when I have updates specific to the new profiles, and I hope you will enjoy these refreshed profiles. :)
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YAY!
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:D
More things for me to pour hours of my time into, hehe!
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This is an incredible start, Mootles! Very impressed with these, there's a lot of potential here :)
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Thanks! :)
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OoOh very nice! How long dyou estimate it'll be until these are fully rolled-out?
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Looks fancy :D
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Probably a few releases until it replaces the old profiles...there are still some things the old profiles have the new ones don't, such as age and gender. Until it's complete though...weeks, maybe. You have to realize that this is going to tie into systems that haven't been developed yet, such as the tech side of the family system. It'll be noncontinuous developed over time. :)
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This is interesting...
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Is interesting good or bad? :P
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I for one, am really excited. :)
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I'm going to try to finish the basics at least tonight...was going to last night, but time just didn't allow for that. :P
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LoL
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Got to take time to enjoy life and such :P
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It's interesting to see how this concept evolves, whether it evolves one particular way or it branches off, leading to many styles.
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I cannot wait for these
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So much [bb] code to do X:
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I know I keep saying 'tonight', but shit keeps on happening...grr...
:P
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What kind of s*it is happening? ???
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I like them.
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Profile Updates
You can view and access all changes in your preview profile, as listed in the first post. :)
New updates have been made to profiles! For starters, the profile menu has been split into two menus, the profile menu and the action menu. The profile menu is for viewing different areas of the profile, while the action menu is for taking some kind of action towards the person, such as sending them a PM or editing the profile.
More importantly though, I've started work on the next section of the profile, Real Life Information. This is for information about you, the person behind the username, nations, character, etc. Currently, real life information has the following stuff to it.
- Real Name: This is pretty open-ended. You can use only your first name, your full name, or you don't have to fill it out at all. If you do not fill it out, the profile will use your username in this section rather than your real name. [New Profile Only]
- Gender: Your gender. :P SMF defaults are male and female, although if there's requests for different genders to be added I'd be happy to hear them. :) [New and Old Profile]
- Location: Your location, which again is open-ended. You can be as specific or vague as you want, or you can choose not to fill it out at all. [New and Old Profile]
- Photo URL: The URL to a photo of you, which will display on the right-hand side of the real life information area. [New Profile Only]
Obviously this area is still a work in progress...if there is any information you're curious to know about the other people you meet here, please let me know and I'll consider adding it to the profiles. :)
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Kinky!
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...JW, do you need some private time with WM?
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Another minor update, the new profiles will now display when they were last online, using relative time (2 hours ago, for example). If you want to see the absolute time, move your mouse over the relative time and a tooltip will display it. :)
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Profiles have been switched over (for the most part).
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Real-world stuff I'm not so fond of, but the rest I'm really looking forward to!
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...JW, do you need some private time with WM?
Why do what you can do in public in private?
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Real-world stuff I'm not so fond of, but the rest I'm really looking forward to!
Of course, real-world stuff is optional, and in the future will come with the ability to restrict who can see it. :)
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Yay! That's an excellent addition to make, WM :)
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These new profiles, I like them.
edit: Moot, I don't want to be a pain in the ass, but I'd just like to suggest adding the bb code buttons to the edit intro screen. Just to save a little time and add some
pizazz
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You can now add to and remove people from your buddy list through the new profiles. I had planned to add more tonight, but ran into another issue that needed fixed which took up most of my time tonight.
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Yay, buddy lists! I don't know what they do but it sounds fun.
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A conspiracy unmasked!
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Yay, buddy lists! I don't know what they do but it sounds fun.
Will you be my buddy?
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Secretly the butt buddy list. :o
The default SMF functionality of the buddy list is to show your buddies as bold in the members online list as well as to list them so you can supposedly easily contact them. You can see the list if you go to User CP -> Buddies/Ignore List. By default, I don't think it's implemented very well, but I went ahead and decided to build on the default system instead of creating my own to avoid the risk of breaking any functionality already in the forum.
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Some minor updates...
- If you have changed your username, the profiles use that name instead of the one you registered with.
- If someone has not added an avatar to their profile, it will now show up as a a faux "No avatar" avatar instead of a broken image.
- You can now add your avatar URL through the new profile edit screen
- The profile edit screen has been updated to look more visually appealing
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A new buddy list section has been added to profiles! This displays your buddies, listed in order of time they were last online, and also stating when they were last online. Additionally, you can also view who has added you to their buddy list. :)
Edit: Additionally long main sections of the profile will scroll now, instead of stretching the entire profile page.