[31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:03 am

Again - sorry for being a bit late, but you know how things sometimes work out if you plan your schedule too narrowly...

This proposal grew out of a thread at the globalnerd.org forums (free registration required), so it is more of a condensed version of a discussion and as such a tad unstructured, which I apologize for.

Synopsis
With a boiled-down framework that factors out all non-essential functionality, we can create an extensible basis for more elaborate modifications and additions to the Joomla user accounts. This White Paper does NOT suggest creating a new CommunityBuilder within Joomla, but to create a plugin system that will make it possible to employ less monolithic solutions for custom user profiles.

Proposal as .odt
Proposal as .pdf

Did I mention that I would be very willing to help out coding this should it be accepted? I am!

darb · Post by **darb** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:19 am

Well this is a very good idea. Flexible user profiling system to be used for different purpose both for site owners and end users is a brilliant progress for Joomla in my opinion. Hope this will be one of the priorities!

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 11:57 am

Thanks a lot! I have read another thread on this whitelist forum that dealt with user profiles and found it to be too complex. Like it had TermsOfService buttons built right in and everything. I tried to keep it down to the simplest possible level and have it as extensible as possible - that is after all how I experienced 1.5 and hey - why not make the user profiling in the same manner?

Hackwar · Post by **Hackwar** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:24 pm

I had a similar idea and I'm actually working on this already. This is heavily based on JParameter. I'm discussing this as we speak with Louis. I hope this will make it into 1.6.

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:27 pm

And we are in the same country... in the same Bundesland...

Well as I said - I would be available for helping on this!

darb · Post by **darb** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:39 am

As Joomla have been good and focused on the content they have missed something that is very important too = the users of the site that is registrar. Here is where you need a better way of setting up user profiling system for users and user groups nested if possible.

If its possible for the site owner to set up a profiling system for user/user groups with different profiling you could use this for better communication and interaction with the web site users. This could be useful for other components like email system ie sending out email to certain users/user groups with a certain timer/action function with different messages/info/marketing etc.

A user could belong to more than one user group like;

user id 1000444 group main: travel and
-- user id 1000444 subgroup xx: diving
-- user id 1000444 sub group xx: climbing

This is two of the user group profiles fields that you should be possible to set up using this for better targeting communication and interaction internally/externally for affiliates etc.

user id 1000444 is profiled with categories travel, diving, climbing etc

So core functions is: setting up a flexible profiling system with user profiles and user groups nested with dynamic forms function when register.
Setting up a timer - a time component when alerts and actions will happened connected to different. This could be like rule sets if-then-actions like when you building rule management system or a kind of small precision marketing system for interact with end users.

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:01 pm

I deliberately excluded usergroups in the core of the proposal, but it is certainly something to ponder. One of the core features of most social networks is after all the establishment of groups and relations.

However, I don't think it should be part of a user account what groups a user is in. Social groups (to distinguish this from functional groups, as in ACL) can be useful in many regards, but it is something I would add another way. Of course, it does make sense to have them as a factor in users profiles - to have plugins that display social groups (and offer functionality for them) in the there.

I also understand your idea to have the groups display on registration, but keep in mind that for large social sites, there can be thousands of groups, so your idea does not scale well. This again shows why the groups should be a separate entity that is linked into the profiling system via plugins.

darb · Post by **darb** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:14 pm

Hi Skore,

I think we misunderstand each other here. What I mean is "none active" user groups ie not to be used for social groups or social activities by end users.

This is for the admin profiling system to control and categorize what kind of end users he have in his site and want to have and how he can make the most out of it. So the end user himself can not create user groups, this is only controlled by the site owner by setting up certain user/user group profiles to which a user belong.

The user just set up his ie interest like travel, sub group diving, hiking etc when register or later and then the admin have the grouping power to segment his user data base for using for better communication and this is done automatically by the flexible set up profiling system=reg process.

So this will not be thousands of groups just a few groups for targeting the audience better of your site for communication. Maybe this is what you mean by "functional groups" - ACL too Skore?

So here It would fit also great with components like a subscription system supporting end users that fill in their profile with more profiling fields giving them advantage of using the site depending on subscription status, plan.

One example; like having 5 different subscription plans.

Plan A Basic User - user have filled in basic of user profile 25 % can only use xxx of all features in site ie components, user modules, forum and forum categories, postings xx etc
Plan B Bronze User- - user have filled in basic of user profile 45 % can only use xxx of all features in site ie components, user modules, forum and forum categories xx etc
Plan C Silver User- user have filled in basic of user profile 100 % can only use xxx of all features in site ie components, user modules, forum and forum categories xx etc
Plan D Gold User- user have filled in basic of user profile 45 % and paid subscription xxx USD and can use all xxx of all features in site but with this limitation of ie components, user modules, forum and forum categories xx etc
Plan E Platinum User- user have filled in basic of user profile 100 % and paid subscription xxx USD and can use all xxx of all features

etc

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 5:23 pm

No, I think my point is still valid. This exceeds the scope of user profiles and should be added in another way.

What might be cool though is to have an abstract plugin system for the profile plugins themselves. So that you could hook onto events like "user put in options X,Y,Z in field M" and that could trigger an event like "assign to group in group extension".

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:30 am

I thought I would get some kind of notification once this is moved to accepted... Great to read that it is!

Oh: My offer to help in the development still stands by the way! So just let me know if you need me for anything.

mtk · Post by **mtk** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:56 pm

Hello,
as no Dev Member has interest in this task - I'm taking over

http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla ... m_id=11337

sk0re, talk to me, we'll plan this up...

darb · Post by **darb** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 12:21 pm

Any updates about this?

rgds

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:53 pm

No real updates, no. We are working together on a couple of projects and this is one of them. We are still in schedule to release for Joomla 1.6 (I think... nobody really knows exactly when that will launch) and I hope we will have a beta to test beforehand - Since this will be more of a component in itself, it should be possible to try it out before a new major Joomla update.

Hackwar · Post by **Hackwar** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:15 pm

1.6 will have some code to extend the user system with little code snippets and creating more advanced user profiles. if this will actually be fully implemented, I can not say, but the basics are going to be there.

darb · Post by **darb** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:36 am

Thanks for info good to know there is still progressing.

feldon27 · Post by **feldon27** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 7:58 pm

Addressing Usergroups would overlap Access Management/ACL. Social Groups with no sitewide permissions is perfectly fine though.

darb · Post by **darb** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 8:05 am

Any updates about this dev David?

cheers!

skOre · Post by **skOre** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 11:12 am

No, seems like this has died. I'm still hoping for the Anahita guys to announce a public version.

server hosting · Post by **server hosting** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:21 pm

my personal experience is that drupal has much better user profile handling then compared to joomla 1.0 , i thought j 1.5 would have it but no! it doesnt have that find of flexibility , i have read in news that j1.6 is going to come up with lots of user customization options , hope that helps for joomla users as joomla seriously needs flexible user operation

darb · Post by **darb** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:39 pm

server hosting wrote:my personal experience is that drupal has much better user profile handling then compared to joomla 1.0 , i thought j 1.5 would have it but no! it doesnt have that find of flexibility , i have read in news that j1.6 is going to come up with lots of user customization options , hope that helps for joomla users as joomla seriously needs flexible user operation

Well you have to use Community Builder, JoomSocial or other profiling addon for this but they are not as good as you expect too.

What I am missing is to have drop down selectors for ie like a country selector, city selector etc from Geonames http://www.geonames.org/ and Maxmind geo ip for making nice things for end user experience. There is so much you can do if you understand your user and how important the profiling is for each user with grouping and segmenting etc etc

Wouldnt be to difficult? http://www.rockettheme.com/blog/coding/ ... select-box
Just add in Community Builder but this is just for countries and not dynamic with location to city too..
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... ement/6171

The Joomla! Forum™

[31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

[31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins

Re: [31]User Accounts extensible by Plugins