Q: Restricting Channel Addresses/nicknames in Registration

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:33:07 +0200

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

UniVox Admin wrote the following post Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:33:07 +0200

Q: Restricting Channel Addresses/nicknames in Registration

I hoped I could get some help with adding a feature to the registration process, or finding the feature if it already exists somewhere...

Goal 1: restrict/require new channel addresses to be the same as the prefix/local-part of the account's email
Basically the the vast majority of users on my server will have the same email format: firstname.lastname@...
For standardisation across the site it would be great if everyone's channel had this same format as their address/nickname.
Implementation: This could either be clear on the registration page, with the nickname immutably fixed to the prefix of the email given (with a notice to contact the admin if they want it changed otherwise), or simply remove the nickname input box and copy it across in the background.

Less-important Goal 2: auto-fill server-allowed email(s) during registration
As almost everyone will have the same email domain too, it would be good to have the option to have the domain already filled in (immutably). So you just fill in your email prefix, which will also serve as your channel address.
(I've already restricted registrations to this 1 allowed domain) If this would become a Hubzilla feature used by others, then if there are multiple allowed domains, then maybe some dropdown box for the possible options would be useful too, for making clear what domains are allowed/making registration quicker.

I'm happy editing the registration window already, but I don't have any clue how to handle the (although basic) js yet, so any help would be great! If this has already been implemented, then even better. Thanks in advance.

(I'm not an expert bc my server is a pretty experimental idea still, I'm not sure how well adopted it will be by the target audience)

This is the code in public_html/view/js/mod_register.js right now...

Click to open/close

    $('#id_email').change(function() {
        tao.zar.form.email = $('#id_email').val();

        if (tao.zar.patema.test(tao.zar.form.email) == false ) {
            $('#help_email').removeClass('text-muted').addClass('text-danger').html(aStr['email_not_valid']);
        } else {
            $.get('register/email_check.json?f=&email=' + encodeURIComponent(tao.zar.form.email), function(data) {
                $('#help_email').removeClass('text-muted').addClass('text-danger').html(data.message);
            });
        }
    });

    $('#id_nickname').blur(function() {
        if($('#id_name').val() == '')
            return;

        $('#nick-spinner').fadeIn();
        $('#nick-hub').fadeOut();
        var zreg_nick = $('#id_nickname').val();
        $.get('new_channel/checkaddr.json?f=&nick=' + encodeURIComponent(zreg_nick),function(data) {
            $('#id_nickname').val(data);
            if(data.error) {
                $('#help_nickname').html('');
                zFormError('#help_nickname',data.error);
            }
            $('#nick-spinner').fadeOut();
            $('#nick-hub').fadeIn();
        });
    });

show all 8 comments

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 05:49:09 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

I'm not a developer, but I do know a little about the themes and templates.

For example, I know that there is a registration form template and that you could override it by using your own theme.

The default code is here: #^https://framagit.org/hubzilla/core/-/blob/master/view/tpl/register.tpl

You would want to create a theme (or create your own version of an existing one), and then add register.tpl to /view/theme/name-of-your-theme/tpl/

Whatever you put in there is what will show up as the registration page. You can hide fields, add JavaScript, all sorts of things.

If you want to modify how the registration form is processed, a developer would know more about how that works.

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 06:15:21 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

(I'm not an expert bc my server is a pretty experimental idea still, I'm not sure how well adopted it will be by the target audience)

It's all about the theme, really. Hubzilla has great features, but the interface needs to be modified for certain audiences.

I am working on such a theme, but it is not done yet. #^https://dev.neuhub.org/page/documentation/home

If you tell me what your target audience is, I could try to make my themes configurable so they work for your audience.

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 12:13:29 +0200

Thanks for your reply! I've actually already got Neuhub red-dash on my server, as it seemed like the most stable of the options (highest V number). Do you make all the neuhub themes? I've edited the theme in a pretty careless way so I think my customisations might be hard to copy across to a new theme. Is the Red Tab theme the one you're working on now? Is it more targeted towards customisation?

You can have a look at my server's homepage etc. It's for a college community at a British university (not college as in American college, it's a collegiate university), so if it was fully adopted it would be used by around ~400 people. It would mainly be for notices and announcements, as well as some discussion, like the current Facebook group is.
One goal is to make it easier to use than the current platforms of communication like the FB group and endless Whatsapp threads. I've customised the welcome page to try to achieve that. I saw on your other post, you were talking about the hubzilla homepage. I agree with that and I've already messily changed the default hq template to be more useful for the average user who won't post much. You mentioned that your theme made it easier to change this homepage for logged-in users. I haven't seen that option so I assume you mean red-tab. I considered changing the homepage from hq to pubstream or network to make it even quicker to get to information for the average user.

Tangent about spreading the fediverse through my university/other universities

Click to open/close

I've had a look at register.tpl and then gone to field_input.tpl. I might make a separate custom field_input_nickname.tpl, but for now I just copied and am editing the field_input code in register.tpl. I think I might be able to make what I need this way. However one barrier is the php variables. I don't know where these are defined and it would be great if I could just customise them rather than writing my custom text directly in register.tpl. Can I make a file in my theme which overrides these definitions, without getting rid of all of them?

Thanks so much for your help. I do hope I'm the first of many amateur admins on this page, it means Hubzilla is spreading to the masses! (for better or for worse)

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 14:56:59 +0200

(Update: I've done goal 1 now)

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:20:52 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

Yes, I am the author of the Neuhub themes.

I looked at your server's home page and it looks nice. I see you are using Neuhub Red Dash.

Neuhub Red Dash was my first attempt at a theme and now I am working on Red Tab and later Neuhub Tab. So three themes in the works coming up.

Red Tab will actually be the first official release, and then I will go back to Neuhub Red Dash and Neuhub Tab for the next releases.

Neuhub Red Tab and Neuhub Tab would most likely be the most customizable though, since those themes will be designed for content & Community websites. Red Tab would be more appropriate for private hubs (but still will be customizable).

All three themes will have the ability to specify the home page in the release versions. Although it should be noted that if you are logged in as a local user, the root (/) goes to HQ instead of the home page. This is actually useful behavior if you are navigating back to your own hub when visiting another. But that is why I am working to make an explicit link back to the home page that works regardless of whether you are logged in or not. Even when you are logged in, sometimes you still want to go back to the site's home page.

As far as the default page goes, the easiest way to create pages is to use the webpages addon. This allows you to create a page using HTML, BBCode, Markdown, etc. and then you change the home page to point to that.

Since you are using Neuhub Red Dash, and it looks nice on your site, let's collaborate on the ability to customize it. If you need certain customization features, I will see if I can add it to Neuhub Red Dash.

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:22:00 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

As far as the registration goes, there is an LDAP addon available. If you are tying their Hubzilla login to their existing college or university login and that supports LDAP, that might be a better way to go. I have never used it, but I've heard people suggest it before.

If you do not want to use LDAP, I know there are hooks that you can use to modify the registration form. I am not a developer, so I don't know how those work.

Maybe someone more familiar with it can chime in.

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 17:31:11 +0200

Thanks for all your work on neuhub! I think they'll definitely make the site more appealing to my users. There are one or two bugs, which I guess is natural before v1. I'll mention them now so I don't forget. 1st is the blank space between the top navbar and the page your on (particularly apparent on mobile; I think it's usually for the breadcrumb for the file your viewing but this doesn't show on mobile anyway). 2nd is the blue post button which gets hidden behind the bottom navbar on mobile, but which is usually in the aside on desktop.

I'd love to get give some recommendations for customisation too though. I'll think of more examples but a big one is loading indicators. Obviously no one likes seeing a buffering icon, but when you try to use the search and nothing happens unless you wait patiently for 10 seconds, it can get confusing. The same goes for opening bigger pages, which can take a while sometimes. This isn't a problem if your browser has a loading bar, but on the mobile (iOS) web app in particular, it often feels like the site has crashed. Being able to add custom apple-touch-icons for the webapp would be handy too! I've done this but had to change boot.php in the site root. Trying to get my head around splash/launch screens too (also relevant to loading) but its ridiculously difficult to do outside of Apple's own development environment I think.

Another thing is selecting what buttons appear in the top and side navbars. I think the side navbar looks really nice on desktop (especially with customised colour) but doesn't show on mobile. In the top navbar, the added hubzilla icon dropdown for sitewide features adds to the confusion, in addition to the hamburger menu (which I can't seem to add anything to). The HQ and Home icons are also too similar and actually get used interchangably. These are all things I could change after hunting for files, but I think maybe it's much quicker to mention them to you. Is it ok if I message you with any other thoughts? I might have student-specific stuff too.

I managed to get what I wanted with the sign-in. SSO at my institution is painfully secure and requires 2FA multiple times a day, so I think people will be happier with it this way. Although if I roll out a uniwide version this would be handy for new users.
If anyone wants the code message me, although it's not very complex I just have never used php/js before. I had to edit the hubzilla core register.js too, since the nickname was set to change to the first word of whatever you put in the 'name' field, and also since I needed to add the singular allowed domain to the prefix entered in the email box. Otherwise I edited a mod_register.tpl copied into my theme folder to update the channel nickname with the email prefix, made it readonly etc. I had to copy the code directly from form_input.tpl because I didn't know where the $variables defining input field HTML attributes are set out.

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 17:25:10 +0200

Scott M. Stolz

scott@loves.tech

Thanks for your kind comments.

Neuhub Red Dash is not mobile-ready yet, which is why it is so awkward to use on mobile.

Neuhub Tab works better on mobile, especially since I figured out a better way to handle mobile navigation. But that is not done yet either. Neuhub Tab also utilizes the starred and pinned apps functionality, so users can change which apps appears in their own personal nav bar.

Red Tab and Neuhub Tab will be the first ones I release.

Note that I plan on making some major changes, so don't expect the final product to look like it does now.

I'll be publishing more major changes next week.