How should the user profile be arranged?

[Mahz]

So far the profile is how I left it on day one and I'm ready to put some effort into it.

It'd most likely be a tabbed interface kinda like vBulletin's. I'm ignoring Visitor Messages for now.

In particular, I want to focus on how to display a user's post/topic/roleplay history.

Any ideas on how to organize this data in a UI?

- In vBulletin, you were either enumerating over a user's posts or a user's created topics in one big list. And you'd have to apply "Advanced Search" filters to narrow it down.
- At the very least, I'd like to differentiate between Roleplays and Off-topic stuff.
- On top of that, how could I make it easy to skim a user's IC posts? How could that be expressed in a UI?
- What's the simplest, most intuitive v1.0 approach?

[idlehands]

I wish I could help, I know nothing. But I do like the idea of separating the IC and OOC stuff.

[Griever]

"- In vBulletin, you were either enumerating over a user's posts or a user's created topics in one big list. And you'd have to apply "Advanced Search" filters to narrow it down."

Was this really such an issue? I can't really think of any way to separate IC posts from other posts without making stuff overly complicated for you. Perhaps have Spam/Members Longue/Off-Topic posts not count towards your post limit/post history?

[Cpt Toellner]

I just found the "recent activity" thing with all the person's friends to be unnecessary and annoying.

[Lady Squee]

I agree that the recent activity thing was annoying.

One thing I would like to see is a bit more customization. I'm not talking about putting a bunch of pictures and layouts. I'm talking about allowing the user to put whatever they want on their profile instead of an About Me with a 30 character limit. Maybe a customization of tabs that they can put up. 'About Me', 'RP Preferences', 'My Characters' just to name a few.

[Jorick]

I think the simplest way to get the post history stuff done well is to have a few very simple filtered displays of their post history, perhaps 4 different things if you want to allow sorting by section. For example:

1 - Created threads.
2 - All Off-Topic section(s) posts.
3 - All RP section posts.
4 - All RP section posts in IC tabs only. <-- This one is obviously the key to easily skimming a user's IC posts.

They could be tabs, or links you click that sends you to a "search results" page, whatever works. Maybe a straight "all posts" history could be thrown in as well, but with #2 and #3 in place that might be redundant and not very useful. If you want to allow people to skim a user's IC posts in the literal sense of actually having them all presented to skim, you could make the posts be displayed like posts in a thread with the full text of each post immediately visible (or the first X lines with some kind of "expand this post" button) upon clicking the link/tab for viewing IC-only posts. If that's a pain in the ass, it'd probably be just fine for v1.0 if they simply got a list of direct links to the user's posts to click on, just like we get now in a user's profile. Less quick and easy skimming that way, but all the relevant data is still readily available for anyone wanting to view your IC posts.

For general organization, I think tabs work well. One tab could be Post History or something, and then, if this is a feasible thing, there could be sub-tabs that show up and give the above listed post history filtering options (which then has either the list of links or the actually displayed posts right there in the profile page). This same sub-tab approach could be done with other things in the profile, like a Roleplaying tab that has a sub-tab to show a person's interests and such to act as their RP Card, a sub-tab that lists what games they're already active in and whether or not they're currently looking for more games to join (and what kind, probably), and a sub-tab for storing character sheets if desired. It could also probably be used for the personal information stuff of a profile, maybe the general profile junk in one sub-tab and off-site contact details in another. Oh, and the stalker wall could easily do with some tab filtering very similar to searching for another person's post history: a sub-tab for threads your friends have made, a sub-tab for their IC posts, etc. I don't know if the tabs within tabs thing is easy to do, but that would probably make for the simplest and most intuitive user experience in the end.

[Captain Jordan]

I never liked how vBulletin clumped all posts together. I really enjoy how SMF and IPB distinguish between someone's posts and created topics. It makes it easy to find a specific topic if you know the creator's name but not the title ("I remember this one topic about ponies started by mahz, but I can't remember what it was called...").

Since you already have RPs treated differently than normal topics, it makes sense to have a filter to see RP posts vs non-RP. I'm not sure whether it's better to clump IC and OOC posts in together or not, though.

As far as the UI goes, I rather like seeing the About/Overview page first when loading a profile. Even if there are other options, the typical reason I visit a profile page is to learn more about someone. When did s/he join? How many posts (total) do they have? Some biographical information, if they've revealed that. Maybe some stats, like where they post most often, when they were last active, when they joined (exact date, not fuzzy time), etc.

I'm not a big fan of tabs, but it does follow the UI scheme you've already created here. I say go with that.

Also, I currently really enjoy the quick way to see which PMs I have with someone already, but that box does take up space if I haven't PMed a particular person yet. Maybe that could be expanded on to topics (and broken into RP and non-RP sections) where you and this person have interacted before?

[Mahz]

Griever said Was this really such an issue? I can't really think of any way to separate IC posts from other posts without making stuff overly complicated for you.

The idea is that surely I can iterate on the status quo unless it turns out that vBulletin nailed it in 1999.

Blitzkrieg said
I just found the "recent activity" thing with all the person's friends to be unnecessary and annoying.

Yeah, that was the worst.

I would eventually like to have some sort of "Friend" or "Creep" feature for tracking friends/lovers. And it would make sense to have some sort of view that shows you where they post so you can be sure to remind them that you're loving on them.

But that doesn't belong in the profile.

[natsumehack]

Blitzkrieg said
I just found the "recent activity" thing with all the person's friends to be unnecessary and annoying.

I love it, not that i use it for stalker reasons or anything.

[Captain Jordan]

Mahz said
unless it turns out that vBulletin nailed it in 1999.

They may have done so in 1999. But I'm pretty sure that their stubborn failure to do anything with it cost them more than that one little idea.

[Mahz]

Lady Squee said
One thing I would like to see is a bit more customization. I'm not talking about putting a bunch of pictures and layouts. I'm talking about allowing the user to put whatever they want on their profile instead of an About Me with a 30 character limit. Maybe a customization of tabs that they can put up. 'About Me', 'RP Preferences', 'My Characters' just to name a few.

I agree. So far I've added a textarea that's only displayed on your profile. Just like a regular forum post, you can put whatever you want in it.

Characters, public messages to your fanbase, that WerewolfXDisco interest check that you're always down for (DTWxD), etc.

[Mahz]

@Jorick:

Good points. That is the approach I'm thinking of taking. It's literal, obvious, and doesn't try to do any backflips.

@Captain Jordan:

I feel the same way about a profile. The first click should give you the vitals.

It's why I like being reminded when I've PMed someone. A future iteration of that concept would be to also show you which roleplays you have in common with them.

I mentioned it above, but this is also where I'd display a generic area that a user can fill out with whatever content they'd like. Like a sig that's only displayed on the profile.

Thanks guys.

[Drakel]

Like Squee said, I would love to see more user customization options for their own profiles. I think when a person visits the profile the first thing they should see should be that individual's information about that individual so we can get a feel on who they are. I liked Vbull's Tab system but it was only helpful for so long and things that a user didn't want to have seen (like their activity and their friends activity) were easily seen, which was something that allowed RP stalkers of all sorts have the ability to find individuals easier. So the ability to privatise certain things like our activity and our friend's activity would be nice.

The ability to create our own tabs would also be a nice thing to have, so then we can have tabs like "My Gallery", "My Characters" and that like... I think the main things a profile really would need though would be a detailed "About Me" tab, a "My Characters" tab, a "My Gallery" tab, a VM tab, Their personal history, and the friends activity wall would be all that's really needed.

After that the ability to select which order these tabs may show and the ability to select a tab as the "Main" Tab would also be nice since some users would like their Photo Gallery being the first thing seen, others would like their Characters or their "About me" tab to be the first thing seen as well... Also the tab's shouldn't really be visible or existent if there is nothing added to them... so at first all profiles would have just an empty "About Me" tab and a VM wall... then when they get into their user options they can add stuff into their other tabs... once they save their new settings the other tabs with things added onto them would also be visible.

Then we get into privacy... A User should be able to hide all but their "About Me" tab, which could just be a big empty space if wanted... Now for Privacy it would be nice to see three main options be able to be selected. First would be a "free" (in lack of a better term) option for all tabs selected, which would then make it so every member can see that individual's profile. The second option would be the "Friends" option, which only allows friends to see certain selected tabs and finally a "Private" option that would hide the selected tabs from everyone other than the user.

Now what I mean by "selected tabs" would be more of something like the user is given a list of their current tabs, each with a "check box" next to it so all a user needs to do is check said tabs and then select the setting that they wish those tabs to be in... making the job easier for the user and it wastes less time placing the setting on each individual tab.

Finally, a new idea that I just thought about right in the end of this is that if you allow users have the ability to create their own tabs then maybe giving that user a tab type would he helpful for that users? For example, first the user selects the "Create tab" button and then they have a popbox or something that they would need to fill out... mainly they just write the name of the tab, select the tab type (Gallery, Characters, Preferences, ect...) and below that they select the one of three options that'll determine who can and can't see this tab.... After they create the tab all they would need to do is fill it up to their specifications and all would be well.

Now of that Tab subject, Friends lists.... Profiles should have this in the side or something and we should expand this option because honestly, after a while you have the 100+ friends and you'll need to search page by page for just a single individual user in that list, making it pointless other than to see who's even on that list. It would be nice to group your friends in subcategories of importance and have a "search friends list" option on that... so then you can either just select the group of friends you're looking for or just write up the name of the individual you're looking for in your friends list.

I think that's it other than the profile appearance customization that we all knew and loved in Vbull... But in all honesty I think that can wait for a while.

Well... That's all my ideas for ya mahz... Hope you like them.

[Queen Raidne]

My Rough Idea:

[Drakel]

Aww... I'm on top of your friends list... I feel so special.. <3s



EDIT:

I think it would be more suiting though to have the Profile image in the left more-so than the right though.. It's more pleasing on the eyes for some reason.. :/