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: <roller-dev@incubator.apache.org>
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 <img> and <a> 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 to use in group blog
situations.
2. users may own multiple weblogs and probably do not want to use the same
icon and about section 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 icon and about section on a weblog and that stuff wasn't available
anymore.
I also think that at the end of the day the icon and about section 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.
And there are also challenges with attaching these items to authors, the
big one being that right now all of the 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: <roller-dev@incubator.apache.org>
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
