By kirilius on

Hi,

I have been researching different options of handling user profiles in Drupal and I found the following configurations:

1) CCK itself allows me to configure user profiles and to add different kinds of fields to them. Then these fields are available in the Views, so I can configure a view to customize my user lists.

2) Node Profile. According to its documentation: "This module builds user profiles as nodes, which opens the opportunity to use the Content Construction Kit (CCK)"
Hmmm... I thought that functionality was already covered by option (1)!!!?

3) Usernode. Again the documentation says: "This module tries to make users nodes." And later on: "Use views to build user listings or even searches" and "Makes building of nodeprofiles easier"

So what is the deal here? Obviously if I wanted customizable user lists, I should be content with CCK only. If I need my users' profiles to be internally represented as nodes, I should use either Node Profile or Usernode. Alright, but what is the difference between them. They both claim to be creating nodes from the user profiles and to integrate well with the Views.

Can somebody shed some light on this topic please?

Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Anybody knows? I am in the same situation to decide which one I should take to build up user profiles, and try to find out what's the difference between exactly this three options.

Barry Ramage’s picture

Barry Ramage commented

Michelle has created an in depth study of this at this link.

http://shellmultimedia.com/misc/user-profiles

very much worth a look!

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Thanks a lot I want to post this right now, too, but drupal community is so fast. ;-)

joachim’s picture

joachim commented

1) It's the core Profile module that lets you add fields to profile, IIRC.

2,3) Both of those descriptions are a bit misleading.
I never managed to figure out what these two modules were supposed to be doing. Maybe at the time I tried them they were still in development, because all I could get from them is this:
- usernode automatically creates a node for each existing user and for new ones in the future. But it's not a node that actually holds anything, just a blank empty node.
- node profile adds a ticky box to content type settings pages so you can mark a content type as being 'user profile'. This appears to have no actual effect beyond being a ticky box.

drupalize’s picture

drupalize commented

re subject

LiquidWeb’s picture

LiquidWeb commented

1- CCK it self has nothing to do with user profiles it enable us to add diffrent widgets to nodes (like image upload, embedded youtube movie etc)
2- bio, node profile (both drupal 5) and content profile (for drupal 6 and successor of previous ones) just enable us to use nodes as user profiles. After having option to use nodes as profiles you can use CCK to enhance them but it is not required.
3-I haven't used user node but I don't think it has something to do with user profiles but if I am not misataken it enable us to list users nodes (forexample all picture nodes, forum posts and stories posted by that user).