user profiles

[Rickey Otano]

I was wondering if user profiles would be highly customizable. In vb it has to few options does not have the ability to say which way you want your profile block floated, and the limited design makes them all look the same and does not let users express there creativity. It also lacks a widget system or app system were users profiles can have there own app/widget on it. Would this be a consideration for XenForo?

 

[Dean]

Hope mentioning another brand in passing is ok, although unless there is a reason I try not to do it.

While I really don't care either way about this, from my viewpoint, all sorts of interesting things can be done in ipb on a per user basis. So I was interested in what parts would be desirable to change in a xf user profile, since Callie mentioned going back to vb from ipb.

 

[Erik]

I never looked seriously at Invision, but I sure very much do like this:

<snip>

I think the above example just look beautiful. Not only that, but they've found the perfect balance in my opinion between letting the user giving a personal touch to their profile and at the same time remain the usability of the profile. You see, all the input fields and other sections on the rest of the user profile UI are untouched, making the interface itself recognizable/looking and working the same on every single user profile. They allow what Facebook doesn't allow: a custom background (with a really nice transparent bar at the top apparently) and they disallow what makes sites such as Myspace horrendous to watch and use. Simply, a perfect balance that works really well. I hope XenForo can give us this.

This is very similar to how Twitter does it as well.

 

[Floris]

The easiest way to make customizations for profiles is to allow a custom profile field where someone can input a userid.css which the system loads in the template before </head>

 

[Erik]

The easiest way to make customizations for profiles is to allow a custom profile field where someone can input a userid.css which the system loads in the template before </head>

You actually have to be careful with that though. I'm pretty sure there are odd cases where it's possible to inject content through an included CSS file, possibly even JavaScript (I wouldn't know the specifics, all I know is that my personal website was hacked once and malicious JavaScript was injected into the CSS files. )

 

[Darfuria]

I'd quite like the Facebook-style boxes that allow people to enter their interests, favourite bands, films, etc. and each comma separated value in those areas becomes a link to a page listing all of the people that listed that particular thing.

 

[dutchbb]

Not really important for me, most people tend to use horrible backgrounds and colors and your forum will soon look like a second MySpace, but if it's popular among other admins...

IMO more important is the content on the profiles, they need to be more like mini-sites for the user instead of simple profiles. An important part of that will be the addition of a gallery, video and blogs all integrated right there on the profiles/mini-sites. This is obvious not for tomorrow but that's how I think they should evolve anyway.

 

[Elizabeth]

Not really important for me, most people tend to use horrible backgrounds and colors and your forum will soon look like a second MySpace, but if it's popular among other admins...

IMO more important is the content on the profiles, they need to be more like mini-sites for the user instead of simple profiles. An important part of that will be the addition of a gallery, video and blogs all integrated right there on the profiles/mini-sites. This is obvious not for tomorrow but that's how I think they should evolve anyway.

I've seen some G*DAwful Ugly ones and some very nice ones. If you are careful and place limits on it, it is a great selling point to your customer base.