988299 - Reconsider URL for user profiles

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Webmaker Graveyard :: Profile, defect)

Description

[Cassie McDaniel [:cassiemc]]

I'd like to reconsider the URL for profiles. Looking at other social sites' profiles, it's clear that the way we are structuring ours – as "cassiemc.makes.org" with an entirely different domain – differs from the norm.

How hard would it be to have webmaker.org/users/cassiemc or something like it?

Brett says this may be this way for security reasons. Any way around it?

Comment 1

[Laura Hilliger [:epilepticrabbit]]

for the record, our users really like username.makes 

I've heard this often and seen smiles on n00bs faces because of it. Just and fyi ;)

Comment 2

[Cassie McDaniel [:cassiemc]]

Thanks for that Laura, that's helpful.

My main discomfort with it is the ability to intuitively know what your user profile url is. Are people able to find it easily? Maybe a moot point if we are able to access the user profile more easily from the main header dropdown.

Comment 3

[Jon Buckley [:jbuck]]

Just so I'm clear, by user profile URL you mean the site that appears when you visit https://jon.makes.org right?

Right now that's an iframe that points to https://profile.webmaker.org/?username=jon .

The reason for this setup is that users can run any javascript they want on username.makes.org through thimble and it won't affect us running stuff on webmaker.org. Github does a similar thing with username.github.io.

So, if you're talking about moving the profile, then yes, we could move it. If you're talking about the content of makes.org, then that would not be a great idea.

To your question about navigation, we can enable finding the profile URL from the header.

Comment 4

[Gavin Suntop [:gvn]]

I dig USER.makes.org. Seems more fun and personalized than the other URL scheme.

FWIW: Some social media sites also use user.domain, such as Tumblr.

Comment 5

[Jon Buckley [:jbuck]]

Oh right - it is technically possible to change, but I also dig jon.makes.org :)

Comment 6

[Cassie McDaniel [:cassiemc]]

Guys, I dig it too. The user.domain is not the issue.

Question is, do users know that makes.org is the same as webmaker.org? And if they don't, how do we help them make the connection.

Re. github example, https://github.com/username/ is the intuitive URL for your profile, which you can find without any help from the interface. If we had webmaker.org/cassiemc that pointed to the same place as cassiemc.makes.org, I would be okay with still using the makes.org arrangement.

Comment 7

[Cassie McDaniel [:cassiemc]]

As discussed today Gavin is going to set up a meeting with Kate, Jbuck, Wex & Aki to consider this from every angle (past, present, future). We are aiming for a decision by end of week (April 18).

Comment 8

[Simon Wex :wex]

/me is in for that meeting!

Comment 9

[Gavin Suntop [:gvn]]

We unanimously decided to go with webmaker.org/user/USERNAME