Your Account features and CNB 5.0

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

To initiate a discussion on Your Account features, I've included a summarized list of features in CNB Your Account, version 5.0. As you can see, it includes most, if not all, of the features requested. If you have other suggestions, please submit them here.

Registration
- All user fields can be configured to be required, optional or absent during the registration process
- Prevent registration from specified mail domains
- Prevent strings in user names
- Require COPPA compliance
- Optional PM on registration
- Define, require agreement with Terms of Service
- Fill out the additional required information before being activated
- Set account activation time (vs. 24 hours)
- Configure Username min and max length
- Configure Password min and max length
- Email must be entered twice to help prevent typos in email addresses
- DNS domain verification applied to the email at registration
- Admins can choose to bypass email activation.
- Allows for Required User approval by Admin.

Member Information
- User webpages support
- Define custom user information fields
- Public / private fields for member list
- Gender and birthday fields (optional)
- Fake email field, realname and user benefits can be disabled
- Admin can change usernames
- Suspend inactive user accounts (automatically or on-demand)
- Improved userinfo pages (our goal is to make them preferable over the forum ones)

Member Management
- Easy user management (improved admin gui)
- Highly improved password-lost functions (internal and gui)
- Avatar Control Panel
- Avatar upload into database
- Option to re-request required fields at login (nuke fields and extra fields)
- Automatic timezone detection
- Ban member
- Admins can allow user self deletion.
- Admins can block user email changes.
- Admins can block user theme changes.
- Admins can now modify pending user details.
- Admins can now view pending user details.
- Admins can resend Activation Email.
- Admins can suspend users.
- Optionally send the admin an email when someone registers.
- Optionally send the admin an email when someone unregisters.
- Cookie killer routine for suspended and deactivated accounts.

Security
- Configure security code size
- Turn security image on or off
- A revolutionary security code configuration panel
- A whole new internal security system (URL Guardian)
- Configure lifetime of cookie
- Configure period of user pageview inactivity (auto-logout)

Email support
- Provides for servers without mail support.
- SMTP mail support (as well as qmail, sendmail and phpmail)
- MIME html/plaintext mail handling

Nuke integration, utilities
- Aware of NSN Groups, NSN Group Downloads
- Admin debug panel for bugtracking purposes
- Aware of NukeSentinel to use it to discover the real IP-Address

For easy reference, here's what new in CNBYA 5.0.0 (subtract this from above to see what's available in 4.4.2):
* SMTP mail support (as well as qmail, sendmail and phpmail)
* MIME html/plaintext mail handling
* Automatic timezone detection
* Easier configurable dateformat
* A revolutionary security code configuration panel
* A whole new internal security system (URL Guardian)
* Easy user management (improved admin gui)
* All user fields can be configured to be required, optional or absent during the registration process
* Terms of Service is editable (stored in the database)
* CNBYA has it's own Avatar upload functions (upload into database)
* Improved userinfo pages (our goal is to make them preferable over the forum ones)
* DNS domain verification applied to the email at registration
* Highly improved password-lost functions (internal and gui)
* Added option to re-request required fields at login (nuke fields and extra fields)
* Added gender and birthday fields (optional)
* All fields can be enabled of disabled on registration
* Fake email field, realname and user benefits can be disabled
* Added optional PM on registration
* Added an admin debug panel for bugtracking purposes

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:18 pm

Looks GREAT already but can we add fields we'd like them to fill out?

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:34 pm

Yes, in addition to standard fields you can create custom fields. In CNB 5.0, standard and custom fields can be optional or required during registration.

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:50 pm

awesome

Sells PC To Pay For Divorce Joined: Posts: 5661

Does it come with a one-week course ?

Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:04 pm

The hope is that people with ideas to improve Your_Account, registration and membership management will contribute ideas, help in testing, or maybe even create a one-week course...

Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:21 pm

I'd be happy to test it if thats what you need, anything else, I'd be happy to as well.

registered · Worker Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 211

Quote:

Improved userinfo pages (our goal is to make them preferable over the forum ones)

Userinfo as in Profile, or Member List?

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 9:34 am

User profile.

Are there other features that would be useful in Your Account?

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 7:32 pm

Strange, I thought I posted this question already, but didn't see it anywhere.....brain cells must be flaking off like dandruf

My question is this. Let's say I update the forums with some additional features. Like the gender mod for example. Will the options in the userinfo pages reflect the gender mod changes in the forums profile, or will they be separate? It would be great if they could be combined with some type of iframe or include function where both "profiles" would be the nuke userinfo page. This way users would only have to go to one page to modify their profile. It can become confusing for some people to have to change user specific features in two different places. That's why quite a few people have changed the Your Account settings to point to the forum profile and totally bypass the Your Account in Nuke.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:11 pm

If you add them through a forum mod, they wouldn't be available (unless the CNBYA uses the same fields, which is doubtful). Since CNBYA 5.0 has gender, we would need to integrate the two. The idea in 5.0 is to make Your Account in Nuke more useful than the forum profile.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:30 pm

kguske wrote:

The idea in 5.0 is to make Your Account in Nuke more useful than the forum profile.

IMO, that may be a problem. There are very few nuke sites that run an unmodified forum. That means members would have to access the forum profile to change any forum settings. To me, this is just cumbersome and quite possibly confusing to newbies. It makes more sense to have a dual serving user info. Where one can update the forums and the Nuke settings in the same area.

All that said, I am a big fan of the CNBYA series. From the admin aspect alone it gives much more functionality than phpbb ever thought about.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:14 pm

Not necessarily, Dauthus. Only if the forum mods affect the user table.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:34 pm

Thinking about the nuke account data versus the forum profile data, I quite like Dauthus idea. Expanding the concept a little, if it were possible to say, add the forum profile into the bottom of the user account page to show both sets of data, all the relvevant sql queries would have been done as far as 'retreiving data' is concerned, so it might be possible to then develop 'plug-ins' to synchronise data between the two. For example with the forum gender mod installed, the gender data from from the nuke user account could automatically be inserted into whatever table/field the gender forum mod uses.

Having said that, I'm not convinced it would be worth the effort. Surely, there can not be that many forum mods that would need to be 'synced' in this way?

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 11:06 pm

Just to give an example of the amount of changes that can be out there. My forums have these fields in addition to the normal forum profile fields:

*Custom Post Color (Define Post Color)
*Country Flag
*State Flag
*Gender
*Birthday
*IRC Chatroom Commands
*Allow others to view my profile
*Use Image Initial in Postings
*Time Management
*Hide These Forums
*Sticky Avatar

All of which a user could not change unless they went to the forums profile. Maybe I am an exception instead of the rule, but personally, I would still like to see them both combined somehow.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 5:55 am

is it possible to include the forum profile file in the your_account module?

Im just thinking that why sync them If its possible to either iframe it or simply include the forum profile in the your_account module, make life soo much easier.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 7:46 am

The problem is that some of the data is shared between forum tables and the nuke user account, some are not.
Whilst, in principle it might be relatively easy to sync the two, problems arise when a mod or add-on/hack etc needs to make changes to either of the table structures. As the data is posted to the DB via a 'form', the form has no way of knowing if any additional fields have been added.
I suppose it might be possible to built the forum dynamically, building it from whatever fields are in the table but then you wouldn't be able to hide form fields and it might leave the whole thing open to security issues.
The question is not so much 'can' it be done as 'is it worth it'. You might spend 6 months coding the thing and then phpBB releases an update that screws the whole thing up.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:33 pm

While I don't think most have that many forum mods that must be maintained in the profile, it would probably be easier to enable (optionally, of course) forum profile maintenance (or just retain the phpBB forums access to maintain that profile).

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:38 pm

I would agree, I honestly do not think it is worth too much effort.
Forum mods are great to start with but ones perspective quickly changes when it comes to doing the next 'patch' or update.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:51 pm

The CNB approach for adding custom or extra fields is to add a record to a custom field database. That allows greater functionality without requiring changes to existing code - the RIGHT way to do it, IMO. If phpBB (and it's mods) did this, it could coexist with other applications like PHPNuke more easily.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 10:27 pm

Ok, how about a link to the forum profile in the Your_Account module?

Something like:

To Update Additional Options of your profile, click here!

That way people would know they have additional options they may wish to change. At least they wouldn't be wandering around the site trying to figure out how in the world to change their gender Shocked

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 1:39 am

.. and they say the simplest idea's are usually the best.
Good idea!

Worker Joined: Nov 22, 2004 Posts: 208 Location: Italy

I might be wrong, but both CNBYA and Forum mods need table alteration.
Now instead of altering an existent table, I'd rather make a new one (say nuke_addition) and when porting a forum mod, or adding fileds to CNBYA i'd only query/alter the new table.
This would make a phpnuke or forum upgrade less painfull 'cause core tables are untouched.
Does it make sense?
Guido

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 6:50 am

Dauthus, that's pretty much what I was thinking.

guidyy, as I mentioned, CNBYA adds a custom table for adding custom fields, rather than modifying the standard table. This has all the benefits you mentioned. But convincing all the phpBB mod developers to do that wouldn't be easy, nor would it address the existing mods that require changes.

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:48 am

I'm not a phpBB freak, but if i do not recall wrong, the users table of a standalone phpBB is already different from the phpnuked version. You need to port a forum hack/addon/mod anyway.
IMHO, porting a mod (and only mods that affects database changes) according to a different table would not be so much more work.
Guido