Should user bios be an extension?

[tobyzerner]

I'm not sure if it makes sense to include user bios in core, because I can see them being replaced by something more powerful. Ideally we don't want extensions to have to disable core features.

Extracting them as a default extension would be easy – do we want to do this?

[franzliedke]

Yeah, don't need this in core, I'd say.

[VIRUXE]

I agree. Rarely anyone want's a bio in a forum. But if they somehow do need it, there should be an extension for it.

[luceos]

I absolutely agree, just take a look at the social profile by @dav-is. Also the current bio has too little value being used on the one page. I would even opt to remove that feature al together from stable and up.

[franzliedke]

Ah, true. What are the chances of that feature being added to your extension, @dav-is? That would mean we could close this issue for good. :)

[dav-is]

Ill add the feature if this goes though. Although, I'd have to rename the extension ;)

[jordanjay29]

I like the extension idea, then if someone wants to add more fields, they have an easy example to work off.

[luceos]

@jordanjay29 with @dav-is experience I wouldn't be too surprised if his extension would allow for dynamic fields. One thing he'll probably have to do is stay away from saving all that data as json in one field and instead migrate into seperate Models.

[jordanjay29]

Solved with Flagrow/Masquerade?

[tobyzerner]

This was removed from core in #1214.

Quoting myself:

I want similar functionality as an official bundled extension in the future, but we have not yet discussed/decided what form this will take and when we will implement it. [...] Bundled extension will come before stable release.

The reason being I think being able to input a little description of yourself (ala. twitter bios) is pretty integral functionality for a forum, and we want to provide a first-party solution for all integral functionality.

I would suggest starting off with just re-implementing the old functionality as an extension. Heck, I'm having second thoughts about having removed it from core. I can imagine people wanting to expand upon user profile by adding custom fields and whatnot, but I just can't imagine someone ever wanting to disable the bio and replace it with something else?

[tobyzerner]

Just to clarify, we're not talking about user profile pages (they're not going anywhere), but we're talking about the little text field that users can write a few words about themselves in - for example on discuss.flarum.org mine would be "Flarum founder and core developer"

[luceos]

I think we should keep it outside of core. Although Masquerade is able to remove the bio, it would probably be better to have a more extensive core extension that would include a signature in addition to the bio. Keeping core clean, flexible and thin is more valuable than (configurable, toggleable) features imo.

[ardacebi]

We should have a core extension for this just like the flags, suspension, and the sticky extension. The core should have it, but it should be disabled by default and users should enable it only if it's necessary on their forums.

Extension developers may want to extend this feature by creating other extensions aside this core extension, with other fields and features maybe?

[PeopleInside]

I am little bit deluded to discover user bio will be removed on beta 8. As soon i see this functionality i loved and i used immediately.

It's sad to see a new version of the forum reduce options available and need a lot of extensions for every single function you need: real sticky, flags with maybe a notification by email... all this seems to be a basic function. If user want more than can use extensions but seems to me important give a basic great experience when Flarum is installed for the first time, user profile description should be included.

Usually less extension you can have on the original software better is. Extensions can be abandoned, core not or is more difficult.

This is what i think.

Maybe just not tried in the last beta, admin or moderator should moderate also this area (user bio).

Maybe this bio can simply be turned off in the admin backend. I prefer an extension can replace the default user bio or simply be able to add functions that see the functions removed totally for give space to external extensions.

Flarum will loose something by removing this, i think also if can be added with an extension, will be a less complete forum on the first install. I really liked when I installed Flarum and discover functions in core, remove it is not a good idea for me. Sad to see this has already been removed from 8 beta.

[jordanjay29]

Third party extension available from FoF: https://github.com/FriendsOfFlarum/user-bio

[luceos]

I'm closing this issue for now. Under fof the guarantee of surviving future releases is pretty substantial. I'd also like to point out we can reconsider this decision after stable if we feel like it, but right now any extension the core team doesn't have a responsibility over is a blessing.