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Issue tracker for Backdrop core.
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[UX] [DX] Move the user page to a separate module #109

Open luiselizondo opened 11 years ago

luiselizondo commented 11 years ago

One of the things that bothers me about Drupal are the /user page and the /user/uid/edit pages. By default, the /user page is totally useless, it just shows when the user account was created. Most of the small websites I create don't need a page like this one, it only adds confusion to users so I usually have to remove it. On medium/big websites I usually override this page with some other functionality. If you add fields to the user, this page will show them up, again, probably not very useful.

If you do want to use the /user page, you either have to:

  1. Install Panels or other module that takes over this page.
  2. Do some heavy theming.
  3. Add blocks using Context or other solution.

So IMHO the /user page:

  1. By default it's almost useless.
  2. If you don't want it, it's not easy to remove it or Drupal "forces" you to do something with it.
  3. If you want it, you need to go to contrib or work on your theme to do something useful with it.
  4. Adds extra work for the site builder / developer because they have to decide what to do with this page.

The /user/uid/edit page is another beautiful thing. This page has several issues.

  1. There's no consistency on the edit page, specially when contrib modules start adding pages or settings to this page. You can end up having a huge mess in this page, settings like username, password, image profile, fields, localization, etc. might be better living on separate pages.
  2. It's hard to hack the path, because so many contrib modules use it.
  3. It's sitting along the /user page, so if you decide to use the /user page as a "Dashboard", or give it another use, you then have a horrible UX by just having the "Edit" tab sitting there. Moving it or disabling it adds extra work for the developer, forget the site builder, it's just not easy without touching code.

What am I proposing?

  1. Remove the /user page from the user module.
  2. Move the /user page to another core module which can be disabled by default, we can call it "User Profile Page" or whatever you like. As long as Drupal doesn't force me to use it.
  3. Change the /user/uid/edit page to something like /settings/uid, contrib modules can create their user configuration pages under settings/uid/foo
  4. Instead of redirecting to the /user page on login, redirect to the frontpage.

Finally, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think neither Wordpress nor Joomla have a /user page like Drupal has.

ghost commented 9 years ago

Let's see what others think of this...

docwilmot commented 9 years ago

This is an absolutely important discussion, since the user page is definitiely as rubbish as you describe. Always requires a tpl file, always. But I;m not sure just removing it to another module helps much, perhaps we should just fix it. I like all the other suggestions

jenlampton commented 9 years ago

omg yes. I 100% agree that the default user page is rubbish.

I like the idea of moving it into its own module, but I think the user/%uid/edit page will likely have to remain as part of user so that one user can edit another. We can remove those horrible tabs from the user page though!

I would also love to see a new optional "User profile" module that...

klonos commented 9 years ago
  • maybe also makes users "fieldable"?

Yes please!

MrHaroldA commented 9 years ago

I also never got why /user leads to two different pages: login, or the display of your user profile.

A /login path seems way more logical.

docwilmot commented 8 years ago

Interim ideas: