Nick's Hotaru CMS Blog

Every social network has its own variation of a profile page, and we all have our favorites. Some like the simple Twitter bio, others prefer a full-on MySpace style page. When it comes to Hotaru, how can you provide a profile page that suits everybody?

Like this:

I'm currently reworking profiles so that plugins can freely add their own pages to a user's profile. Here's a screenshot of where I'm at so far:



You'll notice that the user tabs have been moved into a vertical menu. Currently, the SB Base and Comments plugins add links to their own pages. Other plugins can take advantage of the new layout and plugin hooks to do the same. Two uses for this that come to mind are williamd's Save Post plugin, which could be easily extended to add a page filtered to a user's saved posts, and a private messaging plugin which would add links and pages for inbox, outbox, etc.

From a layout point of view, I decided to leave posts and comments without the menu squeezed into the left-hand side. Squashing that kind of content between the menu and the sidebar would get ugly and be a styling nightmare. However, the other pages for settings, permissions, etc. keep the menu in place.

Now just take a moment to think about this feature. By giving plugins the freedom to add 1) links in the menu, 2) content in the body of the main profile page, and 3) their own user pages, is there anything you can't do?

I'll have this ready in the next few days. It will need a few plugins upgrading and some minor template changes to index.php and any custom user templates. Edit: This is now done, so if you're up-to-date, you've already got this feature