What are the best ways to roll out styled icon/profile pages?

[foxfirefey]

So, one of the projects Styles has been working on is custom icon and profile pages. The stunning exor674 has implemented a backend for custom icon pages; after we implement them for all styles, we will be working on custom profile pages.

One of the concerns is that a good amount of people are going to not see icon pages--and especially profile pages, which are difficult enough to do effectively without shoehorning them into a style--in styles. But we don't want to multiply too many options. Possible strategies are:

• Add a separate display option for icon and profile pages, or just profile pages since icon pages are far less likely to be troublesome in styles.


• Don't add any options. All styles will have the ability to display icon and profile pages in the site style, just like entry pages. Somebody who doesn't want to view them can use the style=mine sticky display and set them thus. This will not satisfy the people who don't want to set display options for style=mine, but it's probably the fewest options.


• Hooking them up to the entry display option--probably not a good idea.
• Hooking them up to the journal display option--also not a good idea, since few people will be using the site view for their journal.

Other ideas welcome!

Comments

[cheyinka]

I think a separate display option for icon and profile pages would probably be best, if connecting that to the entry display option isn't a good idea - I imagine most people who wouldn't want to see the profile page in someone else's style also wouldn't want to see the icon page in someone else's style.

[matgb]

I imagine most people who wouldn't want to see the profile page in someone else's style also wouldn't want to see the icon page in someone else's style

I don't think that follows. I am waiting for the code to go live to style my icon page almost immediately, my icons are mine, etc.

But I'm less sure about styling my profile page, as I know that'll mostly be used by other DW users, not off site users like the rest of my blog.

Lots of people go to profile pages to look at specific bits of info, and I'm less keen on styling that immediately.

I suspect I'm going to anyway, but I don't think the order you put it in follows--someone wanting to look at icons in site style will also want profile in site style most of the time, but the reverse I think is less likely.

[sophie]

I'm confused. It sounds like you consider that off-site users are more likely than DW users to view your icons page. Why would you consider that to be the case? That doesn't make sense to me.

[matgb]

That's not what I meant to imply, althought that's possibly how it's read.

My icons are my icons, if you're looking at them it's because they're of interest to you in some way, how the surrounding page is styled is broadly irrelevent, the only extra info on there is the notify on upload link.

Ergo, I want that styled to look like it's part of my journal ASAP, as essentially it is part of my journal.

However, the profile page is used by lots of people for various reasons, registered users specifically look there to add people, find interests, etc. There are many many navigation items there that existing users are used to finding, and in specific places. Styling it allows me to do things to it that would confuse some people.

Essentially, it's not who is more likely to use the page, more that a styled page will be more likely to annoy a registered user, an unstyled page more likely to annoy an off site user, I want my icons to be part of my journal, whereas my profile is part of my journal and part of my DW site profile.

Existing DW users will look at profiles for specific things, whereas the icon page is just a set of pictures and keywords, how it's styled is less important as there's nothing there to look for to find that styling may confuse.

I'm not sure I've explained that any better this time either, sorry.

[archangelbeth]

I think I understood it pretty well, and I think I agree with your points. Icons are mostly used by the person who put 'em there; people looking at your icons are not going to be seeking standardized data (except for the icon data itself!). People looking at a profile will be looking for specific things, which should be in standardized places.

[matgb]

Exactly. Having said that, I'd hope although haven't looked that everything will remain in standard places on a styles profile page, it'll just have my style surrounding it instead of site chrome.

My approach generally is that everything that's matgb.dreamwidth.org/whatever is mine and should look like it's part of the same site--search engines will treat my icon page and profile page as part of my site, not DW, so they should look like they're part of it.

But I can see many people wanting to be able to find key data quickly that are used to the site chrome anyway, thus a profile page should always have a clear option to be in sitescheme to logged in users (That's in the navstrip I think but...)

[pauamma]

By"icon data", do you mean keywords, comment, and description? (I'm not sure what other useful data there is on that page, except perhaps the number of icons.)

[archangelbeth]

The icon itself, keyword, comment, and description, yes. And at that, the keyword, comment, and description can probably move around a bit, so long as it's clustered pretty close to the icon itself and retains informative names.

[cesy]

I read it as DW users are more likely than off site users to view the profile page, whereas icons page will be viewed by off site users as well as DW users. Does that help, or just confuse things further?