Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Anil Gangolli wrote: Actually, I did see all the e-mail before about why a weblog-level icon and "about" text are not the same as user-level ones. What I was trying to say was that for the weblog-level ones it isn't as clear why you need db storage (whereas if you wanted similar attributes at the user-level it is clearer why you would want to represent them in the db). Where could they be stored if not in the db? I also do understand that users shouldn't be expected to have the skills to edit the templates. I'm just less convinced that these two attributes are somehow as "fundamental" as this would make them. It will only really be an issue if similar things proliferate. I dunno, from my experience these seem to be 2 of the most common weblog attributes. Of course they won't be required, it would merely give a template writer an easy way to include them in a blog. i.e. someone writing a theme can do this ... #if($model.weblog.icon) #end ... and allow a user to pick an icon for their weblog via the UI rather than forcing the user to customize the theme and hack the templates to insert an icon image. -- Allen Basically, I'm +0 on the proposal, but not against it. --a. - Original Message - From: "Allen Gilliland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 9:17 AM Subject: Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes Anil Gangolli wrote: My personal preference would be to stay simple and just let users create their own About page as a template page and use uploaded resource images as "icons". I would like that too, but our experience on blogs.sun.com has shown that template editing is too confusing for most people and forcing people to do it has been hard. There is also the fact that blogging is supposed to be web publishing made easy, so we need to be careful about where we draw the lines when it comes to user experience. At the end of the day we are supposed to be making things as easy as possible for our users. I can understand many users would be happy with the level of functionality being suggested and wouldn't have to bother to learn how to write the template required. Adding a page to the basic theme which included instructions on how to edit it would probably do and be much more flexible for users who need something just beyond what the text field and icon would provide. I agree that getting people to be able to edit templates themselves is preferable, but I just don't think that's realistic. Wysiwyg vs. templates aside, there is still the fact that there are some things that themes should be able to do without requiring hand editing and IMO allowing the blog owner to set a custom icon image and a little about/bio text should be one of them. To give an example, the need for this feature has come about because we have some folks from the sun.com design team who are making some new themes for us and their research and designs have these 2 components in every theme. I personally don't think it's a stretch at all to expect these 2 items to be controlled via the UI in a wysiwyg fashion. I feel we should have some idea of criteria for representing some item in the db rather than in templates/resources. Some example criteria would be that either the item figures in business logic or it needs to be represented in multiple presentation formats, feeds, etc. which would require some sort of duplication/extra work otherwise. In any case, it should buy you something that's hard, impossible, or awkward to get otherwise. I agree, we need a criteria or justification for adding things like this and I have tried to give that. I *do* believe that adding an icon image and about section to a theme is considered both "hard" and "awkward" for most users who are not technical. You've got to remember, many of the people who use blogging tools are people who barely know enough about html to understand and tags, let alone enough to feel comfortable editing a velocity template full of obscure looking #showXXX() macros and loops and conditionals. And again, template hacking is part of the problem. There are some things that themes need to be able to do without forcing users to actually edit the template. To force people to edit templates to do even the most rudimentary things is to make the whole idea of themes useless. My belief is that we want themes to provide users with most of the things they want so that only users who are truly interested in making a custom design have to edit their templates. I understood Dave's rationale for the user-level attributes where the intent seems to be able to avoid duplication for users who participate in multiple group blogs or to avoid the work to maintain things if membership of
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Actually, I did see all the e-mail before about why a weblog-level icon and "about" text are not the same as user-level ones. What I was trying to say was that for the weblog-level ones it isn't as clear why you need db storage (whereas if you wanted similar attributes at the user-level it is clearer why you would want to represent them in the db). I also do understand that users shouldn't be expected to have the skills to edit the templates. I'm just less convinced that these two attributes are somehow as "fundamental" as this would make them. It will only really be an issue if similar things proliferate. Basically, I'm +0 on the proposal, but not against it. --a. - Original Message - From: "Allen Gilliland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 9:17 AM Subject: Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes Anil Gangolli wrote: My personal preference would be to stay simple and just let users create their own About page as a template page and use uploaded resource images as "icons". I would like that too, but our experience on blogs.sun.com has shown that template editing is too confusing for most people and forcing people to do it has been hard. There is also the fact that blogging is supposed to be web publishing made easy, so we need to be careful about where we draw the lines when it comes to user experience. At the end of the day we are supposed to be making things as easy as possible for our users. I can understand many users would be happy with the level of functionality being suggested and wouldn't have to bother to learn how to write the template required. Adding a page to the basic theme which included instructions on how to edit it would probably do and be much more flexible for users who need something just beyond what the text field and icon would provide. I agree that getting people to be able to edit templates themselves is preferable, but I just don't think that's realistic. Wysiwyg vs. templates aside, there is still the fact that there are some things that themes should be able to do without requiring hand editing and IMO allowing the blog owner to set a custom icon image and a little about/bio text should be one of them. To give an example, the need for this feature has come about because we have some folks from the sun.com design team who are making some new themes for us and their research and designs have these 2 components in every theme. I personally don't think it's a stretch at all to expect these 2 items to be controlled via the UI in a wysiwyg fashion. I feel we should have some idea of criteria for representing some item in the db rather than in templates/resources. Some example criteria would be that either the item figures in business logic or it needs to be represented in multiple presentation formats, feeds, etc. which would require some sort of duplication/extra work otherwise. In any case, it should buy you something that's hard, impossible, or awkward to get otherwise. I agree, we need a criteria or justification for adding things like this and I have tried to give that. I *do* believe that adding an icon image and about section to a theme is considered both "hard" and "awkward" for most users who are not technical. You've got to remember, many of the people who use blogging tools are people who barely know enough about html to understand and tags, let alone enough to feel comfortable editing a velocity template full of obscure looking #showXXX() macros and loops and conditionals. And again, template hacking is part of the problem. There are some things that themes need to be able to do without forcing users to actually edit the template. To force people to edit templates to do even the most rudimentary things is to make the whole idea of themes useless. My belief is that we want themes to provide users with most of the things they want so that only users who are truly interested in making a custom design have to edit their templates. I understood Dave's rationale for the user-level attributes where the intent seems to be able to avoid duplication for users who participate in multiple group blogs or to avoid the work to maintain things if membership of a given group blog changes frequently. I still don't quite understand the argument for adding these attributes at all at the web log level (which might be due to my own limited vision). Perhaps you didn't read these reasons posted in an earlier email? 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it is basically impossible to figure out which profile t
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
file uploads infrastructure is centered around weblogs and not users. We have no way to allow users to upload photos and so that would require quite a bit of new infrastructure to support. -- Allen --a. - Original Message - From: "Allen Gilliland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 9:25 AM Subject: Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes This is a reminder that I am planning to do this work pretty soon and add it to the current trunk so it's part of Roller 3.2. This will include adding 2 new weblog fields for "icon" and "about". -- Allen Allen Gilliland wrote: Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dave wrote: >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful. It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more info at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities with that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching of uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads infrastructure is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users would have to be separate. There are little things like that which would have to be considered. -- Allen - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
My personal preference would be to stay simple and just let users create their own About page as a template page and use uploaded resource images as "icons". I can understand many users would be happy with the level of functionality being suggested and wouldn't have to bother to learn how to write the template required. Adding a page to the basic theme which included instructions on how to edit it would probably do and be much more flexible for users who need something just beyond what the text field and icon would provide. I feel we should have some idea of criteria for representing some item in the db rather than in templates/resources. Some example criteria would be that either the item figures in business logic or it needs to be represented in multiple presentation formats, feeds, etc. which would require some sort of duplication/extra work otherwise. In any case, it should buy you something that's hard, impossible, or awkward to get otherwise. I understood Dave's rationale for the user-level attributes where the intent seems to be able to avoid duplication for users who participate in multiple group blogs or to avoid the work to maintain things if membership of a given group blog changes frequently. I still don't quite understand the argument for adding these attributes at all at the web log level (which might be due to my own limited vision). --a. - Original Message - From: "Allen Gilliland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 9:25 AM Subject: Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes This is a reminder that I am planning to do this work pretty soon and add it to the current trunk so it's part of Roller 3.2. This will include adding 2 new weblog fields for "icon" and "about". -- Allen Allen Gilliland wrote: Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dave wrote: >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful. It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more info at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities with that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching of uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads infrastructure is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users would have to be separate. There are little things like that which would have to be considered. -- Allen - Dave
RE: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Hi Allen, Does this mean that for a group blog I can put a picture of the person poting in the summary on the blog home page, or I can make a list and bio of the various blog contributors for a group blog. If so I have a need for this feature right away and would be happy to take what you build and backport it to 3.0 or 3.1 and put it on my production site at www.sereneambition.com Adib -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Allen Gilliland Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes This is a reminder that I am planning to do this work pretty soon and add it to the current trunk so it's part of Roller 3.2. This will include adding 2 new weblog fields for "icon" and "about". -- Allen Allen Gilliland wrote: > > > Dave wrote: >> On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Dave wrote: >>> >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? >>> > >>> > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? >>> > A weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios >>> > and avatars. >>> >>> Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but >>> forgot :/ >>> >>> I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why >>> these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... >>> >>> 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs >>> there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and >>> more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user >>> for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which >>> profile to use in group blog situations. >>> >>> 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same >>> avatar and bio on both/all of them. >>> >>> 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner >>> for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely >>> to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who >>> was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't >>> available anymore. >>> >>> I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really >>> a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to >>> highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a >>> more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think >>> it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. >> >> In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of >> "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a >> bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or >> "icon"? > > Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful. > > >> >> It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user >> object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The >> Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each >> blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated >> as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do >> that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. > > Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more > info at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities > with that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching > of uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads > infrastructure is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users > would have to be separate. There are little things like that which > would have to be considered. > > -- Allen > > >> >> - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
This is a reminder that I am planning to do this work pretty soon and add it to the current trunk so it's part of Roller 3.2. This will include adding 2 new weblog fields for "icon" and "about". -- Allen Allen Gilliland wrote: Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dave wrote: >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful. It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more info at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities with that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching of uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads infrastructure is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users would have to be separate. There are little things like that which would have to be considered. -- Allen - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dave wrote: >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? Good point, some more appropriate nomenclature would be helpful. It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. Yes, I agree that there is definitely still a use for tracking more info at the user profile level, but there are also more complexities with that. For example, we currently have no way to allow attaching of uploaded images to users. All the current file uploads infrastructure is segmented by weblog, so doing uploads for users would have to be separate. There are little things like that which would have to be considered. -- Allen - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Dave wrote: > [snip] > In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of > "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a > bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or > "icon"? > I for one would definitely like to see a blog image option. The about field is handled just fine by the current "description" field. > It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user > object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The > Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each > blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated > as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do > that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. > I've been stewing over a design for a "profile" provider component. The default profile provider would pull user profile information from the DB. Other implementations can pull profile data from other sources (e.g. an LDAP repos or our Lotus Connections Profiles component). - James
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Why can't people just use a bookmark? (I know I don't) :) Allen Gilliland wrote: Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 2 of the things that pretty much all weblog owners tend to put in their templates are 1) a picture, typically of themselves and 2) a short bio paragraph. Right now, Roller doesn't provide any easy way for these items to be controlled via the editing UI and so for people to add them to their blogs they must hack at templates. I am currently working with some folks at Sun who are designing some new blog themes and these 2 items have come up in every one of the designs so I'd like to propose that they be added as built-in attributes of a weblog. This way theme writers and template hackers can have a simple and consistent way of getting these pieces of information for a weblog and allowing users to control them without having to edit templates. The technical side of this would be very simple, just adding 2 new columns to the website table ... image varchar(255) null bio text null (or can varchar work?) then of course adding them to the pojos and a couple of simple UI controls on the Weblog Settings page to edit them. The UI controls would be simple right now, just a textfield for the image and a textarea for the bio. In the future we can improve the image field to use some kind of image selector from the users uploads, etc. anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. -- Allen - Dave -- Dave *David Levy * *Principal Engineer* *Sun Microsystems Ltd.* 55, King William St., London EC4R 9ND United Kingdom Phone +44 (0) 20 7469 9908/x18308 Mobile +44 (0) 7710-360922 Blog http://blogs.sun.com/DaveLevy Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Proprietary & Confidential . This e-mail message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privilidged information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recepient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
I agree that any proposed avatars and/or bios belong with the User themselves... Maybe there's even a way to override the user avatar or bio per specific weblog...? - Nelz On 1/25/07, Dave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dave wrote: > >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > > avatars. > > Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ > > I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why > these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... > > 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is > really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more > importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a > weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use > in group blog situations. > > 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same > avatar and bio on both/all of them. > > 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for > a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to > happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was > controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't > available anymore. > > I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a > property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to > highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more > generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's > easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dave wrote: >> anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? > > Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A > weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and > avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. In that case it makes more since to call the field "about" instead of "bio" -- it's a bit of text about the blog, which could be used as a bio or something else. And instead of avatar how about "image" or "icon"? It would definitely be useful to also have those fields in the user object or a new user-profile object, that way group blogs like The Aquarium could include an about page that automatically lists each blogger in the blog and a photo of each and is automatically updated as member hip in the group blog changes -- you won't be able to do that with one bio and avatar for the whole blog. - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
Dave wrote: On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 2 of the things that pretty much all weblog owners tend to put in their templates are 1) a picture, typically of themselves and 2) a short bio paragraph. Right now, Roller doesn't provide any easy way for these items to be controlled via the editing UI and so for people to add them to their blogs they must hack at templates. I am currently working with some folks at Sun who are designing some new blog themes and these 2 items have come up in every one of the designs so I'd like to propose that they be added as built-in attributes of a weblog. This way theme writers and template hackers can have a simple and consistent way of getting these pieces of information for a weblog and allowing users to control them without having to edit templates. The technical side of this would be very simple, just adding 2 new columns to the website table ... image varchar(255) null bio text null (or can varchar work?) then of course adding them to the pojos and a couple of simple UI controls on the Weblog Settings page to edit them. The UI controls would be simple right now, just a textfield for the image and a textarea for the bio. In the future we can improve the image field to use some kind of image selector from the users uploads, etc. anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and avatars. Doh, I meant to specifically address that in my original email but forgot :/ I had the same initial thought, but I came up with a few reasons why these items wouldn't be associated with a user profile actually ... 1. with the many-to-many relationship between users and weblogs there is really no reliable way to get to a user from a weblog and more importantly there is no guaranteed way of getting a single user for a weblog. so it would be troublesome to figure out which profile to use in group blog situations. 2. users may own multiple weblogs and may not want to use the same avatar and bio on both/all of them. 3. users may also come and go from a weblog, i.e. join and be owner for a while then leave it to someone else. while this isn't likely to happen very often, it would be a definite problem if a user who was controlling the avatar and bio on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available anymore. I also think that at the end of the day the image and bio are really a property of the weblog and in most cases are just being used to highlight the author. However, in many cases they can be used in a more generic way such as being an icon and a tagline. So I think it's easiest and most appropriate to have them as properties of a weblog. -- Allen - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 2 of the things that pretty much all weblog owners tend to put in their templates are 1) a picture, typically of themselves and 2) a short bio paragraph. Right now, Roller doesn't provide any easy way for these items to be controlled via the editing UI and so for people to add them to their blogs they must hack at templates. I am currently working with some folks at Sun who are designing some new blog themes and these 2 items have come up in every one of the designs so I'd like to propose that they be added as built-in attributes of a weblog. This way theme writers and template hackers can have a simple and consistent way of getting these pieces of information for a weblog and allowing users to control them without having to edit templates. The technical side of this would be very simple, just adding 2 new columns to the website table ... image varchar(255) null bio text null (or can varchar work?) then of course adding them to the pojos and a couple of simple UI controls on the Weblog Settings page to edit them. The UI controls would be simple right now, just a textfield for the image and a textarea for the bio. In the future we can improve the image field to use some kind of image selector from the users uploads, etc. anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? Yes. Don't those belong on the user or a new user-profile object? A weblog has multiple users and could therefore have multiple bios and avatars. - Dave
Re: Quick Proposal: support for weblog avatar and bio attributes
On 1/25/07, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 2 of the things that pretty much all weblog owners tend to put in their templates are 1) a picture, typically of themselves and 2) a short bio paragraph. Right now, Roller doesn't provide any easy way for these items to be controlled via the editing UI and so for people to add them to their blogs they must hack at templates. I am currently working with some folks at Sun who are designing some new blog themes and these 2 items have come up in every one of the designs so I'd like to propose that they be added as built-in attributes of a weblog. This way theme writers and template hackers can have a simple and consistent way of getting these pieces of information for a weblog and allowing users to control them without having to edit templates. The technical side of this would be very simple, just adding 2 new columns to the website table ... image varchar(255) null bio text null (or can varchar work?) then of course adding them to the pojos and a couple of simple UI controls on the Weblog Settings page to edit them. The UI controls would be simple right now, just a textfield for the image and a textarea for the bio. In the future we can improve the image field to use some kind of image selector from the users uploads, etc. anyone object to adding these 2 attributes for weblogs? Nope. -- Allen -- http://raibledesigns.com
