Alpha Tester Mini Profile

[Eloell]

Hello you talented coders you!

So I am an admin on an RPG site (http://wall.freeforums.net/) where we have both member accounts and character accounts. We really want to add a badge system to reward members for their accomplishments. We don't need this feature for character accounts, but only for member accounts.

I have noticed on THIS site that Alpha Testers get their own special mini profiles and that it has EVERYTHING we want for our member mini profiles--most importantly, that area at the bottom for badges (but all of the other info is saweeeeet too)!

Is there any way I can have a code for that mini profile? Or is it super secret and only for proboards? I'd understand if that's the case, but if it is then does anyone have a different code for a similar one/a way for me to accomplish what I am attempting?

Thank you so much for reading! 

[Brian]

We don't have special mini-profiles for alpha testers on here. We have the ones added by this plugin for users who won a mini-profile design contest and for staff who want to use one they designed. Some of the users that have them just happen to also be alpha testers.

But I wouldn't recommend using that plugin if your goal is to have a single separate mini-profile for users. You should edit the Mini-Profile layout template for changes like that. The plugin's purpose is to have a whole bunch of unique mini-profiles for members to choose from for cosmetic purposes, like so:

support.proboards.com/user/33409/recent
support.proboards.com/user/97216/recent
support.proboards.com/user/156500/recent

Most plugins that add badges and awards will usually add these to your forum without you having to do anything, or with a single line change.

[Eloell]

THAT THIRD USER. Kami. That was the one I saw and wanted ;_;

I'm so sorry, I'm probably a moron, but for some reason I'm hitting a wall with what you are typing (because I'm not very code savvy). You linked me to your plugin that gives me the ability to have different kinds of mini profiles on my site...but then said you wouldn't recommend it? You mentioned having a "single separate mini-for users"...is that the same thing as me wanting a mini-profile for characters on my site to be different than the mini-profiles for members on my site? So I DO want 2 different kinds of mini-profiles. Is that plugin the right place to go for that desire?

And then, once I'm at that plugin, is making it look all fancy just a matter of learning coding/asking for codes?

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me! It's much appreciated.

[Kami]

I designed this myself so while you may be able to use the layout if brian provided the code, a vast majority of my mini profile is images and tbqh I dont really want to share my PSDs.

[Brian]

May 3, 2018 17:54:32 GMT -8 Eloell said:

You linked me to your plugin that gives me the ability to have different kinds of mini profiles on my site...but then said you wouldn't recommend it? You mentioned having a "single separate mini-for users"...is that the same thing as me wanting a mini-profile for characters on my site to be different than the mini-profiles for members on my site? So I DO want 2 different kinds of mini-profiles. Is that plugin the right place to go for that desire?

You already have this ability by editing Themes > Layout Templates > Mini-Profile. The Custom Mini-Profile Creator plugin is completely unnecessary to achieve this, and I recommend against using it because this isn't what my plugin is for. Using the plugin to achieve this is only going to slow down how long it takes users' browsers to process the page versus just doing it through the templates and letting the servers do the heavy lifting.

The key difference is what your goal is versus what the plugin's goal is. You want two different kinds of mini-profiles, and you want one of them to show only when a user has met certain conditions. This can easily be coded into the Mini-Profile layout template with a trivial amount of effort. The advantage of this is that the HTML of each of the mini-profiles is going to be output on the page right away by the server, versus the plugin having to do this by executing Javascript after the page loads which makes the user's browser replace the mini-profiles once everything's finished loading (which means you'll see the default mini-profiles for a brief second before the plugin runs). The latter takes a lot more time and places undue workload on the user's browser.

There's a few reasons I made that plugin, but its primary function is to allow staff to change an individual user's mini-profile at any given time to something completely different than what's output by the theme. The plugin's functionality can be easily duplicated by editing the Mini-Profile layout template at first, but once you've got more than a few mini-profiles all of that template code adds up and you'll eventually either have a huge mess of unorganized code to maintain across multiple themes or you'll hit one of the variable or if statement limits in the template engine.

The reason we use the plugin on ProBoards Support is because there's not much purpose in hard-coding a novelty cosmetic change for a select handful of users. If we wanted to make it so that the Alpha Tester group gets its own mini-profile we would totally use the templates for that instead of the plugin.

[Eloell]

Ahh, this all makes sense!

Thank you so much for your reply and thorough explanation. I get you.

Also--thanks for your reply Kami. ^_^ I didn't realize those were images. Thanks for clarifying.

Cool cool! So it sounds like I just need to go learn how to do some mini profile creating via HTML! I'll get on that! *gulp*

Thanks again!

[₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪]

Remember you can always post for help as you begin learning how to code. While we can't help you replicate Kami's mini-profile identically since it is unique to her, we can still help you achieve your personal vision. Wanting a solid box at the bottom for your badges, for example, is something you can most certainly have for your own forum as it's plenty generic. I learned how to code by building my own proboards forum so lord knows I've leaned on poor proboards helpers and admins a LOT in my time xD Can't guarantee I'll always know the answer, but I'm more than happy to try passing along what others once did for me. :) Since you're doing mini-profiles, making threads in this Template board is the most relevant place to ask questions for now, and feel free to tag me if someone isn't responding - I'll let you know if I have an answer or not haha

[Boy_Wonder]

Also adding feel free to tag me because I just seem to enjoy breaking proboards (and I'm 100% not sorry about this!)

[Eloell]

Yesssss ₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪ and Boy_Wonder...don't forget that you extended the invitation first (muahahahaha)! Thank you guys, that is extremely generous of you both! I would LOVE to learn more about coding...the hard part for me is that I don't even know where to begin. Do either of you have a link to a beginner's tutorial for coding (specifically for proboards)?

[₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪]

I'm not sure how I even started learning, to be honest. When I began, the extent of my coding knowledge was, like, how to bold text. I know I constantly was posting in Support asking for help but I don't think there's any particular tutorial I followed - unfortunately it's been over 5 years so at this point, I don't remember what I did. D= I do know that I reference www.w3schools.com very often for help nowadays, though I'm unsure how good it is at walking a beginner through because I just use it to reference little things I need help on. I have also had www.codecademy.com recommended to me many times when I was trying to learn JavaScript - so while I haven't played with its HTML and CSS tutorials, I've used it for JS and know that it does a pretty good job of walking you through it all.

Other than that, ask questions here, look through other people's codes to get references for how they do things, google tutorials and questions to see what other people have said (googling a question saves my butt a lot), do a LOT of testing (80% of my coding time is refreshing to check something then going back and fixing what I see is wrong.. again and again and again.. it isn't smooth, easy, or fast, and there's always a bug to sort out >.>), and be sure to test in a place that won't hurt your site, like a separate theme or even separate test forum entirely.

[Boy_Wonder]

I rather started coding during proboards v3 days, I was going to suggest also rather than looking too much at layout templates start instead in global headers and footers - because its a lot less intimidating. I remember being EVER so proud at learning how to put an image url to display in html!

Can also second w3schools, but also don't be afraid to do something like:

HTML [query]

so for example HTML how do I bold text?

Will certainly pull up answers to the query.

I would always start with HTML and CSS first, and ideally learn them hand in hand, but also (and yes its bad practise but in the same breath its somewhat easier) don't be afraid to do what's known as inline styling while testing things

{{This means:
<div style="border: 1px solid #FF0000;">This Div has a red border!</div>

Just as then you can once you've got your styles formalised (and styles are the css aspect) move them into your stylesheet proper

[₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪]

not gonna lie, I use inline styling for almost everything, heh