Profile Management

[Nuan8]

Having learned a lot about Discuss recently, I would like to point out that the handling of profile data is, to use the technical term, fubar. The standard profile seems to have its own problems, while Discuss handles other data in mysterious and unknowable ways, much like a vengeful god.

So, it would be better to have a proper way to handle the profile data, both in terms of what may be visible to users and what is helpful for site SEO or user management.

I could easily come up with 20 values which would be beneficial to get about my users. Discuss at this point handles maybe 5 of them. Of course site customization should take care of some variables or factors, but there needs to be a solid base to build off of.

Putting everything in the JSON file seems a little gimmicky to me, but could be acceptable if the technology is safe and robust enough, anyway access to this data is still somewhat problematic.

If I am going to build relations with my advertisers, I need substantial amounts of hard data on my users and site. So this is a key issue of a mature solution, I respectfully suggest. Cheers on a Friday!

[rthrash]

Honestly, Discuss should use the standard MODX profile/user tables, IMO. I concur with your assessment.

[Nuan8]

Wow cool! Yes that sounds fine but the users will definitely want to customize their user data, and that's where the rubber hits the road, because now it sounds like a custom db, that's how it got to a JSON file last time I think :-)

How about a bunch of placeholders, which users can define for themselves? Make a set number, after that the user needs to use a custom setup.