When we set the "display" setting in form designer, who are we displaying to?

I'm still not sure what is meant by the word 'display" in the "form designer".

Are we displaying only to people who can add data? If so, why are there no comparable controls for displaying to let people see the data after it has been entered?

Ideally there would be four kinds of display setting:

1. For initial data entry (e.g. initial profile creation when a new member wishes to join the network), display this form field as part of an empty form to... [option list - people who may enter data]

2. Display initial completed form to... [option list - people who may see the form]

3. For later data entry (e.g. after a member application is accepted), display this form field as part of an update form to ...[option list - people who may enter data]

4. After later data is entered, display this field as part of completed update form to.... [option list - people who may see the form].


The present so-called "form designer" is actually a "form field designer", and there is no obvious process for building a whole form and displaying the completed form (with entered data) to different user groups.

Somehow, the "form field designer" needs to be integrated with an actual "form designer" that creates forms that users can pre-view before making public the data they have entered.

My feeling is that the basic form field and form building tools in JR are very versatile, but not yet organised into a user-friendly system for either administrators or ordinary network members.

I seem to have hit a wall here in my attempt to design forms for members to create and display profiles that can then be seen and searched by all visitors to the site.

For effective development of social networks, member profiles are the key element that allows members to interact socially.

The following steps or functions need to integrated into a seamless, obvious process for online social networks to flourish:

1. Profile form design,
2. Profile creation and updating, and
3. Profile display to other members (and/or all site visitors)
4. Profile search (the in-house system for searching profile content)


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 10/02/15 03:08:33PM

Think I answered that in the other thread:
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/new_posts/32338/shifted-profile-from-one-quota-to-another-and-it-disappeared

But I'll put it here too for completeness.

The Form Designer "display groups" the selections you choose are the people or profiles those settings will display for.

eg:
* profile "indexing" is owned by @someuser who is a 'Master Admin'. The "indexing" profile is in the "Quota A" quota.

If the 'display group' has (quota) Quota A selected, then the form field will show.
If the 'display group' has (group) Master Admin selected, then the form field will show.


The Form Designer is for the FORM. It has zero, none at all, control over the output of the data to wherever the data is displayed.

Just because you can put data into the datastore, does not automatically mean that that data is output anywhere at all.

The templates are for outputting data to the user in whatever way you desire.

Form Designer = data into the datstore
Templates = data out of the datastore formatted as desired


Its a "form designer" the form fields are the individual entities on there, a select box, a check box, these are form fields. semantics,... I know.

In the templates you can have it however you want, your not restricted to how I think it should work, because you can make it however You want it to work. No limits.

A small bit of code like this is how you would check in the templates:

That reads "If the length of the profile name is longer than zero, then display it.".

Which I think is what your after. You can then extend that as much as you like, eg:
That reads "If the length of the profile name is longer than zero, then display it as a main heading".

or
That reads "If the length of the profile name is longer than zero, then display 'hello my name is _____(profile name)________ ' nice to meet you!".
updated by @michael: 08/17/15 05:59:33PM

Thanks. That should be useful for those who can work with templates.

What I need is a meta-tool or ap for generating and installing the templates needed to output profile data.

I'm with Michael in thinking that Jamroom should not be limiting how site owners/administrators choose to display profile data to the world.

What I'm suggesting here is that making selected profile information public is a key function of most social networks.

(It's what scientific journals do when they publish author details along with the article the authors wrote. Every scientific journal is in effect a social network, designed to spur interaction between authors and readers. There are thousands of such social networks both online and offline.)

So, I'm very sure that anything to make publishing profile data easier, faster, and intuitive for site owners and regular members would greatly expand the potential user base of Jamroom.

I'm not saying what member profile data should be selected for making public.

Each site owner will want to make different kinds of profile data public, and may only want to dictate the process for some profile data in each profile.

At the same time, members might be given the option of publishing further data about themselves, from within their profile data form. The meta-tool needs to give them control too, without asking them to master JR templates.

Perhaps the meta-tool/app proposed here is not something that can be developed by the JR team any time soon.

I'm willing to back my suggestion financially, on behalf of all JR users, if that helps. That's easier for me than trying to become a developer.

****

ps Sorry - I suppose that this is all something I should be putting in the Suggestions forum.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 08/20/15 06:47:16AM

Any ap or tool that is created is going to be a limitation on what exists now. What exists now is no-limitations on how you present the data. The best an interface to replace that could hope to do is offer some set of pre-set designs to be chosen from.

I can't see how that extends anything, it limits it. I can see that if you really really really don't want to ever look at code, that that could seam like a better option.

But before resigning yourself to that point of view, take a quick look over this page, it has 2 methods to alter existing templates so you can add in these changes without an interface.

"Altering a modules template"
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/development/1051/altering-a-modules-template

I think you'll find the biggest decision comes from deciding where you want your output to be placed.

Pre-set designs would be fine... for adjusting all elements of the public view of a profile page.

Your tweak (or design) for my Ninja-skin profile_sidebar.tpl file a while back allowed me to show profile data in the sidebar.

Today I could tweak your tweak with my very basic html knowledge.

It would be nice to have:
(1) a design showing how put the profile data at the top of the page in the main profile panel, and
(2) a design showing how to show different fields for different profiles for which different profile fields have been created.

Not all my profiles are person profiles. Many are profiles for service areas in my network, e.g. for forums and groups related to editing. I can create a different set of profile fields for the one profile in my Editing quota, but I can't (with my lack of coding knowledge) isolate the relevant fields for public display in just that profile and quota.

I wish we had something like the Sitebuilder tools for playing with the layout and published content of profile pages, while not interferring with the templates that determine what content is published in the profile page.

i.e. having changed a template to show profile data in the sidebar, could a front-end tool like Sitebuilder be used to shift that data into another area of all profile pages in the same quota?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 08/29/15 06:20:15AM

@michael

Here are some attached screen images to show what I am talking about here.

Item 1. The sidebar of the public profile for "Chief Admin" in my "Central Administration" quota. This displays selected form fields from the back-end form (field) designer, but I have no simple WYSIWYG control over how these selected fields are displayed on the profile page, outside the sidebar. There is no public-form design tool for the fields that are chosen for public display.

Item 2. The sidebar of the public profile for "Editing and Proofreading" in my Editing Hub quota. Here the form fields displayed are the same as in (1). I don't know how to exclude them from this quota and profile, and if I want to display other form fields here, they will automatically by displayed in (1). Without knowing more complex CSS, I can't control how form fields are displayed for different quotas and profiles.

So what I am hoping for is a form design tool or template or design or any other user-friendly WYSIWYG system that allows us to allocate different form fields to the public/visible pages of different quotas and profiles, and to different positions within those pages. Or could this be an existing Sitebuilder tool that pulls in form fields?

The current "form designer" is great for designing fields, but not for organising and publishing them.

Item 3. This is a screen grab of my current form field templates (tpl files) in the profile_settings page.

Item 4. This is a screen grab from the bottom of the CSS code panel for the profile_sidebar_tpl. Michael put the code there, and I have adjusted the html for bold/non-bold, and the wording, but can't do anything more.

I have five different research papers that need to be written simultaneously, and really can't wrap my head around learning CSS! (sorry).


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

I hear you. There's a new member to jamroom @bignet-design They just joined a couple of days ago and are a web design firm. I'm hoping you can work something out with them to get your site just how you like it.

We really need some more web design firms around to pick up this type of project. What your asking for isn't hard, but it is if you have to start from the very beginning. Lets see if they are interested.

If not, I'll help you get something sorted.