Working on replacement profile module, tentatively called profileplus.module - ideas wanted!

By Coyote on 24 Feb 2006 at 01:59 UTC

I've begun work on a replacement for profile.module, which I am tentatively calling profileplus.module

While I considered suggesting at least some of the changes I am making to profile.module itself, I'm concerned that they might add overhead while adding features that many users might not need. And yes, I'm also a little shy about making major changes to core modules, since this will be among my very first Drupal projects.

In a nutshell, I've noticed that a common need for site owners is to be able to add different field types to profile.module easily. Currently, you have to hack the hard-coded field types to do this.

What I wanted was a way to add drop-in extensions (a la Flexinode), that would add new field types to profiles easily.

While working on that project, I realized that it wouldn't be too hard to add a little more functionality - such as field types that don't refer to the built-in profile values field, and which are display-only. Sometimes, you want to have things display in a user's profile, but it doesn't necessarily need to be edited or stored as an actual user variable.

For instance, I wanted an easy way to add lists of "recent nodes by this user" so that they appear in profiles.

Well... I've got that working... but then I decided, it would really be better if some of this stuff appeared in a tabbed interface, so that every displayable profile field thing doesn't appear on the same page. The user/edit pages have a tabbed interface for different sections - I think that profile viewing ought to have the same thing, so that only the necessary information is shown at a time, instead of an enormous page (if you have lots of profile fields).

And then I got to thinking, "Well, if I'm going to do that, wouldn't it be nicer if there was an easy way to make different columns and areas in those profile tabs?"

So... this project is getting a little bigger, and I'm thinking that it's _less_ suitable for core, but would be really useful to people who need this functionality.

A couple sites I maintain are heavy on the user profile side of things. In other words, a major focus of the sites is not merely content, but searching for users or viewing traits and information about users. Those sites need more than just primitive profile capabilities.

So... thoughts, comments, criticisms?

Comments

Hmmm...amazed at the lack of

venkat-rk commented 24 February 2006 at 12:30

Hmmm...amazed at the lack of response to such an important module. I think people have missed your post somehow.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

1.) Please consider providing the ability to define different registration pages for different types of users. Many organisations and communities have different types of users that would be interested in their web sites. These users would have different kinds of profile information associated with them, so a one-size-fits-all registration form is a shame. Ideally, each type of user would be mapped to specific roles.

2.) Ability to hide certain profile fields from certain roles. The user should be able to choose which profile field is visible to which role on the site. For example, on a community site, I may want to hide my telephone numbers from anonymous viewers while making it available to everyone else. This basically needs an additional setting to the "profile visibility' field which has 3 options currently.

Any update?

marcoBauli commented 30 August 2006 at 10:03

hi,

did this module ever see the light in the end?

Any update welcome!

thx

Thats a great feature

geve commented 11 March 2007 at 05:29

I think that the Point 1 that venkat-rk is a very usefull feature that must be there .
Here is a particular scenario
[I had to make website for my department in the college. i require a different registration page for btech students,phd students, faculty, staff etc.]

1.) There should be option for classifying a user accourding to a field and other fields are visible only accourding the the value chosen in that field
[ for eg btech student has roll number , faculty has research interests and so on]

2.) Permissions should be given automatically to that user based on the value he enters for that field.
[faculty should be given permission to edit pages. There should be a mannual approval mechanism before people can use this.]

3.) Generating lists of a particular type of users showing only certain details
[ I might need a page for listing faculty which has fields for name, designation,email,phno
a different listing for students which has fields for name, roll no,etc..]

a man can do as he will, but not will as he will

Great!

jjeff commented 24 February 2006 at 18:01

There has been talk about making profiles into nodes for some time now - in core. This would provide so many advantages, I wouldn't even know where to begin!

taxonomy for users!
profile searching!
potentially less confusing profile interface
aggregation of profile information using node tools (like Views module)
node access on user profiles (different access to different users)
etc., etc., etc...

I recommend posting a message to the development mailing list with a pointer back here. Maybe someone will be able to fill you in on any work and/or thinking that has been done around this.

I know that this could be a VERY well received change.

BTW, I'm excited about your usernodes module! I have several modules that each implement this one-to-one user-to-node relationship (bio module is one) and I've always felt that this should be abstracted out so that it could be used with CCK/Flexinode. I'm looking forward to testing it out!

--= Jeff Robbins | www.lullabot.com =--

And one more thing

jjeff commented 24 February 2006 at 18:07

I would really encourage you to write this module as a direct replacement for profile module. And aim to try to get it in core. You should start by going through and figuring out how to implement all of the current features in profile.module as nodes.

Ultimately, it will really benefit the community to have profiles become nodes, so this approach will ensure that everyone will be able to benefit if/when this gets into core.

--= Jeff Robbins | www.lullabot.com =--

I second developing user

venkat-rk commented 25 February 2006 at 04:10

I second developing user profiles as nodes. For me, its biggest advantage would be the ability to use taxonomy for users. I am not clear at the moment, though, if what I mean is that by creating a user account, a taxonomy term gets created with that name(similar to image (galleries) and simple news modules) or whether it is simply being able to tag those nodes with terms.

Let me explain.

For a web site for a nonprofit network comprised of NGOs, companies and individuals, I had to create the user accounts separately, then 3 separate roles and then create taxonomy terms for all these three groups because a taxonomy term gave me a listing page and somehow, it seemed more sensible to say that a user had their own page at www.domain.com/companies/company-name than www.domain.com/user/user-name.

I could have used the latter if profile.module had given me separate paths for user registration for different types of users (as I requested in an earlier post). I would then have been able to alias one type of user to one of my groups and so on. Instead, I was forced to go with the admin nightmare of maintaining 300 plus terms and 300 plus user profile pages that are not nodes.

Another use case:

I think having user profiles as nodes may also help in situations where many users need to be associated with a certain user/account. For example, if a user account is a company or any other organisation, I could then say there are x users associated with/belonging to that profile/account/usernode. Not all the additional users may need to have their own detailed profiles, though. It will be just be one main profile and additional users associated with that profile.

Privileged Users:
If this (above) becomes possible, we could then introduce posting privileges to these additional users. If I have, say, six users associated with my organisational profile, I could assign the responsibility of posting different types of my organisational content to different users. I could set their privileges as the admin and they would only need to register for an account.

There are web sites that do this nicely and I will be happy to give you access to my account if this sounds an interesting feature to implement.

Great Idea

mtk commented 11 October 2006 at 22:47

I'm also in a great need of extending the user profile by role.
I think "noding" the user profile will help a lot.

has any of this module been published or coded...?
I'm willing to help...

One thought...

dgeilhufe@yahoo.com commented 25 February 2006 at 03:34

CiviCRM provides an extension for the Drupal profile. It allows custom fields of all common types tied to the user's CRM record. So it does much of what is described.

What it doesn't do is expose a CRM record (e.g. a Drupal user) as a drupal node. But we are interested in helping anyone who wants to work on it get that accomplished.
http://drupal.org/node/47921

CiviCRM provides full APIs (http://objectledge.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviCRM+Public+APIs) so exposing a CiviCRM profile as a node might be a realatively straight forward thing (says the business guy ;)

David Geilhufe
Social Source Foundation
Try CiviCRM http://www.civicrm.org/

update?

edrupalec commented 18 April 2006 at 19:05

Hi coyote, this module sounds really good. Are you working on it currently?

budda committed a different module under the name profileplus, so you'll need a different name
-----
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Uploads?

starkfree commented 22 April 2006 at 19:12

I would love to see the ability to attach files to a profile. For example, you could add a field that allows someone to upload a music file, or upload a video file, which would later fit into the profile on display...

why not fields based upon roles?

mbria commented 27 April 2006 at 02:15

May be this could help:
http://drupal.org/node/36753#comment-114872

force users to fill a new added field

korayal commented 2 June 2006 at 10:14

it would be great, when we need some new information about the users. so when a new field is blank. the account should ony show the warning about the empty field, and not show the nodes.

Related with nodes...

mbria commented 15 June 2006 at 13:58

Hi,

I developed a dirty hack for profile to create relations between user's profile and nodes.
Here you have the code:

http://drupal.org/node/68381

I could be useful for profileplus.

BTW, any advances?

Cheers,

I developed a dirty hack for

venkat-rk commented 15 June 2006 at 14:00

I developed a dirty hack for profile to create relations between user's profile and nodes.

Just wanted to point you to usernodes module, which has some other features as well:
http://drupal.org/node/50850

cck

edrupalec commented 15 June 2006 at 16:42

thank you both.

I imagine the dirty hack is faster (performancewise) than usernodes. Have you tried usernodes with cck?

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http://www.drupalecommerce.com/modulesexplained
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Have you tried usernodes

venkat-rk commented 16 June 2006 at 06:46

Have you tried usernodes with cck?

No, I haven't, although I saw some issues for usernodes regarding making it work with cck.

The same developer

t4him commented 18 June 2006 at 18:45

The original author of this post is Cayote, look at the top post. The Author of node/50850 is Cayote. I believe he has just changed the name from profileplus, because it already existed, to usernodes.

Regards,

t4him

Views-CCK-Nodes-Profile

t4him commented 18 June 2006 at 18:41

Hi mbria,

I landed on this thread in search of a way to 'expose' the e:mail in the user profile to views and cck. A simular topic is being discussed here and a Summer-of-Code Project here. This might help.

I was able to achieve some of the user/node relationship stuff with the inline views module.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out in the end.

Regards,

t4him

the other way...

mbria commented 18 June 2006 at 23:32

I wanted to say "cck usernode is wonderfull, but is covering the way node2profile, but nothing is covering profile2node as my hack did".

t4him, with your replay and your work with cck and profile made me notice that my reflection is obsolete.

Please keep working in your module... looks really promissing.

I feel like your work is too much for my humble drupal knowledge, but let me know if I can help with translations (I'm a native Catalan and Spanish speaker).

Best regards,

Nor my Work

t4him commented 19 June 2006 at 12:15

Look at the author of the project, it's not me.

I was simply pointing out that 'others' are hard at work as we'll as you with this type of integration. Maybe there can be some colaboration. I, as we'll, am not considered a programmer.

I wanted to create a Contact list from the profile e:mails. Maybe you know of a way to do this?

regards,

t4him
--*--
post back with solutions

Two things I desperately need

GWL commented 15 June 2006 at 17:28

Two things I desperately need from an improved profile module:

1) Checkbox grouping

2) Greater ease incorporating profile info into other nodes, such as using a profile field as a signature on forum posts. To some extent this is possible now, but it requires a LOT of php & sql wizardry to pull it off. Something more intuitive would be very nice.

Checkbox grouping: Perhaps

venkat-rk commented 30 August 2006 at 11:25

Checkbox grouping: Perhaps the new fieldgroup module does this?- http://drupal.org/project/fieldgroup

Also, the nodeprofile module (SoC project) based on CCK might be the answer to a better module for profiles.

Hide entire profile, as well as selected fields

karldied commented 24 June 2006 at 05:19

Hi Coyote,

Thanks, this looks like a great addition. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post here or in usernodes (http://drupal.org/node/50850) and click "request new feature."

Two things I'd like most:
1. User option to hide selected fields (already proposed, including functionality to perform by role)
2. Option to hide entire profile (so that admin and test profiles can be hidden).

Hey! Good idea

hiweed commented 11 August 2006 at 02:05

Please see this:
http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/profile#comment-144242
Thanks.

Select from list and add if not found field

formicin commented 16 August 2006 at 14:50

I would like to create a drop down list for schools, but I don't want to enter all schools. I want users to look at the list first, if they can't find their schools, they can add it to the list and the school they added are showed in the list. So the users registered after them can select their school from the list. Is there a way to create that type of field? I think it is like free tagging.
onkare.com

Ajax lookup for registration fields

nathanraft commented 2 September 2006 at 12:14

It would great to be able to associate a registration field with a node type and allow node reference as with CCK.

This way if you if a long list of groups, categories of interestes, etc you new user can simply start typing.

For example I would like to have a comprehensive list of universities for someone to choose from (but most likely it wil not really be comprehesive) and I want missing universities to be added by the users.

If I this is already possible please let me know.

When are you thinking of releasing this?

I am not sure about the ajax

venkat-rk commented 2 September 2006 at 15:19

I am not sure about the ajax part, but with the Node Profile module, at least the node reference should be possible.

Freetagging is a must!

nathanraft commented 22 January 2007 at 01:20

Imagine you have someone entering the university they are from... but you don't have an extensive list so you put the ones you know in and then let the users add new ones.

Simple ajax lookup would not work because you have to have all of them entered.

A dropdown would not work because you don't know them all.

So Freetagging is the answer.

So the ability to create a field type that is a category is what is needed I think.

Project still active?

SoftDux commented 4 September 2006 at 16:27

Is this project still active? I didn't see it in the Modules page, where could / would I download it from?

I have a quick suggestion:

Let's say I setup a site with 4 roles, each one with more access than the previous ones (with the option of charging a memebership fee for the more advanced role(s), and a user register as an entry level role, but later decides he wan't to "upgrade" his role. Can that be done?

Looks interesting

mzabala commented 15 November 2006 at 17:26

I'm tracking this thread.

Interesting

pyrello commented 27 November 2006 at 23:21

tracking this thread...

Also tracking this thread...

Rosamunda commented 17 January 2007 at 03:21

But I would love to know if there were some improvements on this too...

:-)

Rosamunda
Buenos Aires | Argentina
www.ligadelconsorcista.org

can you post any of this?

dzynz commented 29 January 2007 at 18:10

For instance, I wanted an easy way to add lists of "recent nodes by this user" so that they appear in profiles.

How did you accomplish this? Can you post it here? I too am trying to figure out how to do this, along with possibly displaying it in the Author Information Block

Thanks!

Just found this

nancydru

she/her/hers

English

Boston

commented 11 March 2007 at 15:38

I've only been Drualling for a month, so I just found this thread.

What I am looking for to fill a current need to eliminate some static pages is:

A field that is only available to a specific user role (say, BOD, for Board of directors).
The ability to then create a page showing the users having this role, including those special fields.
As long as I'm doing "my druthers" how about a semi-required, or "nag" feature that reminds those users that they haven't entered anything in those fields yet.
How about pseudo-blocks of field groups rather than tabs that lots of people don't see?

For example:

About Me:

Address
City:	State:	Zip:

My Interests

Nancy W.
proudly running 3½ sites on Drupal so far

NancyDru

What's the status?

nancydru

she/her/hers

English

Boston

commented 14 May 2007 at 13:20

It looks like this has been abandoned. Coyote no longer has a contact link, and his/her home page is missing in action.

Nancy W.
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Design or How To notes in your database

NancyDru

I need this functionality despirately

j.patrick1982 commented 30 August 2008 at 10:52

Hey any more developments in this project ????????????????
any download links ?

I need this module

j.patrick1982 commented 30 August 2008 at 10:54

I need multiple regstration pages on my site i have been working on it since last 7 days and my project is being delayed because of it please help me if you have any support tips
I need 2 different registration forms and i dont want to modify the core user module as it will not support the updations
Please help