Custom profile hack programming started

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[admin (no pm's please)]

Ground has just been broken on this

This was after another round of going over the options, including the option of simply not going ahead.

A review of the existing available custom profile hack revealed it would have a significant performance hit, and we were concerned about our own design in this regard.

But what we have finally come up with does I hope fit the bill of doing the job, whilst not killing the servers, and all in a relatively simple to use and expandable way.

Not sure when it will be hitting the live or even test forums though.
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[sgts]

Brilliant... this is one I will be using
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[admin (no pm's please)]

The current way it looks is that you define custom fields in window ini file format in a dialog like the forum footer dialog. e.g.

[AGE]
level=user
type=text
default=12
length=2
maxlength=2
autogenerate=1

You then can either add the input fields to your template, or let them be autogenerated, they will always be autogenerated in the admin screens.
More options will appear over time, for that matter only a start has been made on the above features.
I thought of making it an "xml" definition for even more power, but that would be overdoing it.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Won't get a chance to work on this today But tomorrow in pencilled in as a full day on this

I am kind of hopeful that by the end of the week something quite playable with could be put in place. So we could have some member lead feedback on how it develops.

The big issues once the core tech is there, is how to make it easiest for people to use. So I can see it being better having an alpha version of the code being used by some people on the understanding that there will at that stage be no backward compatabiltiy guarenteed between releases.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

First question people can help with. Profile fields fall as I see it into 3 distinct types.

1. User and Admin can update. User and Admin can see.
2. Admin can update, User and Admin can see.
3. Admin can update, Admin can see.

So when entering the data that will set up an item. You will need to enter something like:

access=user
visible=user

or:

access=admin
visible=user

Is there a clearer way of specifying this?
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[symon]

Makes sense to me.

But my brain is hurting from all them bullets last night
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Well a custom profile field is now working in the sense you can alter it in a users profile and the value is saved and returned. That might sound trivial, but is the basis on which it all has to be built.

More of a database change has been done than I was planning on, hence no way can this be "alpha'd" until after Saturday, as we prefer to do database updates on Saturday morning.
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[sgts]

They all make sense. Am I correct?

access=user + Admin (Both can change)
visible=user + Admin (Both can see)

or

access=user
visible=user

or:

access=admin (User cannot change)
visible=admin (User cannot see)
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[admin (no pm's please)]

well

access=user
visible=admin

would probably not be that useful. But I think it is clearer having the two parameters rather than rolling them into one.
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[sgts]

So,
user = User and Admin
admin = admin only
Correct?
If so then yes it is fairly straight forward.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

Yep pretty much be defintion, admins alway have access/
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[admin (no pm's please)]

With basic fields, if you have :

{XPROFILE}

in the profile template file, the custom fields will now appear. Or you can program them yourself if you set the "automatic" variable.

Think the next step is to get them into the admin screens, and then the places where the results need to be visible.
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[sgts]

So, if we have an admin field viewable by all users it could become a 'secondary' rank field. i.e. user groups or admin defined group?
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[admin (no pm's please)]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Seems to be working in the admin panel now.

So main thing is to let the things be used in the users viewable profile and posts.

At the moment I am thinking of not implementing validations and different kinds of input fields. Lets see what needs arise before adding complexity!

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