Discussions on the UserHomePageAddOn

What is "the user's homepage"? Is it the standard twiki %MAINWEB%.%USERNAME%? Is it intended for a user's own content (e.g. daily journal, scrapbook) or for preferences (skin, textarea width, etc.)?

I'm just wondering what/how this addon would be used.

-- MattWilkie - 13 Jun 2003

yes, it is the standard %MAINWEB%.%USERNAME%.

It seems some people use it also to store some small info about themselves, or links to it, or use it as a kind of "mini-bookmarks". And why not? it makes sense. Most users are getting used to see links to "My yahoo" or "My place" or "Your account" on web sites.

And if you look at it, a typical TWiki page is full of signatures linking to your home page... It seems natural to begin to put useful information there

On its use, actually I coded this addon in response to KoalaSkin users (MartinCleaver). I have no religion on how it will/should be used.

-- ColasNahaboo - 13 Jun 2003

MailToTWikiAddOn requires write/protecting user's homepage (because uses email from user's homepage to authenticate). IIRC it was AntonAylward who proposed to create another web with writable info about users. But how is this plugin better than just using MAINWEB.USERNAME?

-- PeterMasiar - 14 Jun 2003

In the view mode, by default, user is not authenticated so the %USERNAME% is always TWikiGuest. So to provide a direct link from a view from the front page you need either link to a authentified script, or to a protected page that could automatically redirect people once authetified.

-- ColasNahaboo - 14 Jun 2003

Thanks for creating this Colas, I appreciate the effort.

IMO it would be even better if this plugin could achieve the functionality without creating yet-another script in TWIKIBASE/bin - this namespace is not controlled and quickly becomes cluttered. In CommonFrontEndCgiScript PluginBinNameClashes I outline a proposal to unify all scripts into one, based on PeterNixon's MegaTWiki MegaCgiscript; I'd encourage you to think about what we'd need to do to achieve this - is it a new entry in MorePluginHooks?

I just need to install the new version now...

-- MartinCleaver - 14 Jun 2003

May be I misunderstand, but could't that be done without the script? How:

1. The action of the form button points to a RedirectToUserHome topic with the viewauth script, not view, e.g. action=%SCRIPTURL%/viewauth%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/RedirectToUserHome
2. The viewauth script is identical to view but is authenticated (see TWiki docs)
3. The RedirectToUserHome redirects to the user's home page

-- PeterThoeny - 14 Jun 2003

To Martin:

• Actually, I am in the process of splitting even more the scripts in bin/ ... why? because of search engines... The problem is that the syntax in robots.txt is very poor, so the only way I see it is to allow search engines to run the bin/view script and disallow others. Thus to prevent the SE to index also the printable view, it means that the printable view should be called via another script than just view... So I think we should really consider the implications for SE of reducing the number of bin/ scripts...

• The problem is your item 3. How do you redirect in standard HTML without resorting to javascript from inside a topic? You need to issue a Location HTTP response... so you need a script, or did I miss something?
  PS: I used the trick to have a topic named YourHomePage, read-protected by disallowing TWikiGuest, which does the same thing. But you still had a mnual indirection...

Re: "to prevent the SE to index also the printable view, it means that the printable view should be called via another script than just view... So I think we should really consider the implications for SE of reducing the number of bin/ scripts..."

Wonderful!!

-- RandyKramer - 16 Jun 2003

Oh, Colas, you are correct, redirect does not work in the body of the HTML page. Sounds like a need for some markers in the templates/skins where Plugins can insert additional text into headers. Not sure if feasible, the %HTTP_EQUIV_ON_VIEW% preferences setting can be used to add additional header content, but not conditionally. Possibly with the latest SpreadSheetPlugin? E.g. in %HTTP_EQUIV_ON_VIEW% add the redirect conditionally if the topic name equals RedirectToUserHome.

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Jun 2003

A couple of things:

1. Colas, I have, per-se no problem with entries appearing in apache URI namespace - it is at this level that restrictions for robots.txt appears. I worry about duplicate code though (such as parsing of parameters), and the fact that duplicating code leads to maintainance-of-commonality synchronisation problems.
   • I think we need to move this conversation to CommonFrontEndCgiScript. Have you considered all the points over there? For simplicity we might wish to have files in a bin directory (preferably hidden by ShorterURLs), but this should be implemented like ActionTrackerPlugin's actionnotify script.
   • I even think that the view/viewauth situation is somewhat ugly as it seems to me that auth stuff could be separated and called rather than copied.
2. Peter, are you suggesting that SpreadSheetPlugin be installed just to give this functionality? I agree that it provides good functionality but it seems a bit of a heavyweight solution.

-- MartinCleaver - 17 Jun 2003

Well, I do not think you should have to duplicate a lot... if you duplicate a lot in scripts, just factorize in a module

I have added my 2 cents on CommonFrontEndCgiScript.

-- ColasNahaboo - 17 Jun 2003

added .zip to CVS

-- WillNorris - 19 Jul 2005

I added a SHORTDESCRIPTION to the "Add-On Info" section so that this add-on is represented properly in the AddOnPackage topic and query topics. Please feel free to take this into the next release.

-- PeterThoeny - 04 Nov 2006