Adding more site options to the user name tag

[eosrose]

Title:
Adding more site options to the user name tag

Area:
Site-Specific Markup

Summary:
I would like to add more site options for the <user name> tag. I've found the capability to refer to users on livejournal, insanejournal, etc. very useful. Now I'd like to be able to easily type <user name=whoever site=blogspot.com> and pull up a proper link to my friend's blogspot account. The same goes for <user name=whoever site=wordpress.com> and others.

Description:
I've been looking at the list of external sites that have been made compatible with the <user name> tag in the FAQ (http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=87) and have found a definite bias toward journal-hosting sites closely related to LJ. This doesn't surprise me at all (it makes sense to have started there), but there are lots of other popular blog-hosting sites out there. I would like to start seeing that reflected here on DW.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two sites that I would love to see incorporated, since I've got friends using those services that I'd love to easily refer to with <user name> tags:

(1) Blogspot.com
(2) Wordpress.com

If anyone can think of other sites, perhaps suggesting them in the comments to this post would be appropriate?

P.S. I believe someone suggested a work-around to allow users to add external sites on their own, but that seems to be deferred for the time being. Asking for specific, popular sites might be a short-term solution until that other suggestion can be feasibly implemented.

Poll #6499 Adding more site options to the user name tag

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
33 (55.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
2 (3.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
25 (41.7%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[sedge]

I'm pretty sure there's a site missing from the FAQ - I seem to recall that Ravelry's another site that works in the tag.

(Testing: casey is the only programmer at Ravelry right now.)

And Ravelry's not even a blogging site.

[sedge]

Evidently I misremembered!

[melannen]

It currently works by default for any site where a user's page is at site/users/username and their profile is at site/users/username/profile, so it may work for .some sites that aren't specifically listed.

It would be nice to get more options in, thogh.

[matgb]

I have ticked 'no opinion' as I'm actually undecided. The user name linking works very well for sites that have a profile and a blog/gallery/whatever as separate content, but blogspot and wordpress don't do that--some WP users will have an About page, but others will delete it, Blogger profiles are completely separate from individual blogs and have weird number based urls.

Effectively, if I want to link to my old Wordpress, I can type [a href="http://matbowles.wordpress.com/">MatGB[/a> easily. It has slightly more characters than [user name="matbowles" site="wordpress.com"> but is also more flexible--on WP, my account is MatGB, but my main blog there is matbowles, I also have a few others I can post to.

Essentially on both WP and Blogger, the blog is not the person, the person has a separate account with a profile, and then each blog may have multiple contributors.

Ergo, I'm unconvinced it's useful, and especially don't see what the Profiel userhead replacement would link to.

Maybe it's just my preference though, I type [a href] tags so often I find them easier than user name tags, I use the user tags for sites where it's a distinct advantage.

[holyschist]

IAWTC.

[sofiaviolet]

+1

[eleanorjane]

I do think there's one piece of utility from having a [user] tag option that [a] tags don't provide: the user head icon, because it provides an easy visual clue about what I'm linking to. I can immediately show the difference between eleanorjane and eleanorjane without having to add clarifying text or an icon of my own.

[thorfinn]

+1

[ariestess]

+1

[thorfinn]

Unpopular around here these may be, but:

twitter.com
facebook.com

[eleanorjane]

There's already one for twitter, thusly: eleanor

I suggested it a few months ago, I saw someone else suggest it a few weeks ago, and I first saw it come into use fairly recently.

[thorfinn]

Hrm, I may need to suggest the inclusion of the @ as part of the twitter userhead. It does look a bit weird having a twitter username without it.

[azurelunatic]

It does.

[eleanorjane]

Hmm, re FB, how would one do it? The site's based around real names, but one's account name (as in facebook.com/accountname) may be different, or it may be an ID number for people who never bothered to even get an account name).

[thorfinn]

It would have to be by vanity URL - I think that is the ID these days. Or the number for people that don't have a vanity URL.

Thanks for the note about twitter existing though, I missed the existence of that one. :-)

[eleanorjane]

Other suggestions:
- Flickr
- Delicious
- Tumblr

[chagrined]

+1 for all of these, especially tumblr for myself

[sally_maria]

Tumblr would be good, definitely.

[stepps]

+1 for all of these, but especially delicious.

[feathertail]

Identi.ca
Freelish.us (with a purple icon since their favicon isn't one yet)
Status.net (once their beta is finished)

[feathertail]

I still think there should be some kind of unified protocol for cross-site linking. Maybe the OStatus / federated social web people have something in mind; they use something like it for Status.net installs.

[cesy]

What should the userhead link to for Blogspot and Wordpress? Is there a standard URL for the profile page?

[matgb]

Userhead I'd say should be the Favicons, and no, for neither site. Blogger does have profile pages, but they're completely independent of the blog and the URL is your profile ID number.

[cesy]

So the userhead should link direct to the blog, same as the actual name, then, do you think?

[matgb]

That's what we're doing with Twitter, so yeah. Can't think of a better approach other than to get Blogger to substantially improve their profile pages, which is an off site issue that we can change to at some point anyway.