User Profiles Version 3 - Advanced Profile

User Profiles Version 3 is no longer just a tutorial. I have taken as much as I could of version 2 and put it into the Advanced Profile module. By using Panels 2 as a base, I can provide a base to build on and a bunch of building blocks which non programmers can use to put together a customized user profile. It's still a little bit of work to set up but is much simpler than the tutorial and also much more stable. And it's tons more flexible. It works with either bio or nodeprofile and you can even skip the whole profiles as nodes and use the core profile, though you do lose a lot of functionality that way. You can add as much or as little as you like to make it work with your site.

The module is still being developed and more features are being added but it is quite usable as it is. I'm reasonably confident reccomending it for use on live sites, though you should test it out on a dev copy first just to be sure. The really awesome thing about basing this on panels is that it is fully exportable. You can set it all up on your dev site and just export it to be used on your live site. That's actually how much of the module was built; by exporting the panels I put together.

You can find the module on the project page and the documentation for getting all set up in the Drupal handbook. More advanced tutorials for customizing your profiles will be here in my handbook when I get time to write them.

If you have any issues with the module, please use the issue queue. It's much easier for me to track them and that's also where other people having issues will look for answers.

Enjoy!

Converting from user profiles tutorial to advanced profile

I've started converting Coulee Region ONLINE, which was the basis of the user profile tutorials, to using advanced profile. So I have some preliminary docs for converting from the tutorial:

  1. Take your site offline as this will make a temporary mess
  2. Disable nodeprofile bonus (this won't be needed anymore so can be deleted as well if you want)
  3. In template.php, remove:
  4. - function phptemplate_views_view_list_buddylist_of_uid
  5. - function phptemplate_nodeprofile_display_box
  6. - function phptemplate_user_profile
  7. Add "basic info" group to your uprofile node type
  8. Move the fields that aren't already in a group into "basic info"
  9. Edit the user profile panel page. Remove the existing guestbook content at the bottom. Add custom content and put in this code:
    <?php
    print guestbook_page(arg(1));
    ?>
  10. Follow the install directions of Advanced Profile including the instructions for using with nodeprofile. You will not need to generate the node type as you already have one.

All that's left is interests as taxonomy. The way I did it in the tutorial is really hacky so I'm looking at a better method possibly using the content taxonomy module.