profiles

On the WordPress Hackers Mailing list, Ptah Dunbar recently proposed an idea that I think is pretty cool and would be a time saver for developers and custom installers called Installation Profiles.

Installation profiles could automatically pre configure WordPress with a set of activated plugins, change the default activated theme and could also possibly change/add some default settings/content?–all during the install process. This could be beneficial to a lot of users/developers allowing them to jump right into content creation instead of site configuration.

Users could create a profile that contains all their settings and activated plugins they’d usually have to configure after installing WP. The profile that they create could also be used across all their blogs–saving a lot of time.

I’m thinking something along the lines of being able to export my blogs configuration into an XML file just like you can with blog content into a WordPress eXtended RSS file. I use the same settings for each WordPress install I do and since I occasionally reformat my WordPress powered sites, it would be an awesome time saver to just upload an XML file and have my site setup the way it was before the reformat took place. Of course, there are other uses for install profiles so implementing an extensible way of creating them would be a good idea. What do you think of the idea?

So far, the closest thing we have to installation profiles is DD32′s newest project, WordPressQI or WordPress Quick Install which provides options to change the pre-installed plugins that are installed along with WordPress as well as configuring permalink settings up front.

While we briefly talked about this during episode 70 of WordPress Weekly with Andy Peatling, today during the early part of the WordPress developer chat, Jane Wells passed on a link to http://profiles.wordpress.org which is the first public instance of BuddyPress in action on the WordPress.org domain. Let’s take a look at Mark Jaquith’s profile since he is a core committer and very active across the project.

Mark Jaquith Is A Very Active Man!

This profile page shows the plugins that user has created, the topics they have created in the WordPress.org forum, their replies to forum threads, ideas they have created, ideas they have replied to, their activity on Trac, plugin trac activity, and BuddyPress trac. That is what I found listed on Mark’s profile page but I’ve seen others listed as well on other profiles such as WPMU topics, WPMU Trac, bbPress Trac, etc. All of the Trac activity contains links to specific changesets as well as tickets along with a short description of the ticket. Pretty awesome to say the least!

The profile editing page gives users the chance to enter their job title, website URL etc. It covers most of what you would see in typical web profiles. However, you can also define how you use WordPress either for Personal use or Business. You can also select the option to be added to the WordPress Consultants list. This is interesting in that potential clients will have the ability to see just how active those consultants are within the WordPress project/community. Definitely worthy of a selling point for most clients.

Easy Way To Track Activity Of WordPress Consultants

Since BuddyPress is in action, we can also manage friends or friend requests. This is all part of the BuddyPress project so if anyone has used that software before, none of these features should come as any surprise.

Logging In For The First Time:

If you have a WordPress.org forum user account, that same information can be used to log into the Profiles website. Only when you log into the site for the first time -will- a site wide profile be created for your account. If you don’t login, no profile will be created for you.

This is exciting stuff! I’m already playing around with my profile and going around adding people as friends. Definitely get on board and help test out this install of BuddyPress. However, if you come across any problems, I’m not sure who to contact so I would just post a new thread in the WordPress.org support forums.

~~Last but not least, add me as a friend!~~

*Update*
I just spoke with Andy Peatling and he says that the friends feature is going to be turned off on profiles for now and that it’s not supposed to be there. So no friendships for us!

Custom Install Profiles Sounds Like A Cool Idea

First Signs Of WordPress Using BuddyPress With Project Wide Profiles

Logging In For The First Time: