Extended user fields for .7
As most of you probably know, extended user fields (as with most things) are being overhauled for .7.
As most of you probably know, extended user fields (as with most things) are being overhauled for .7. All extended fields will not be stored in their own field in the db. This will allow for much greater flexibility when using extended fields. Searching, sorting, etc is not possible with sql queries.
With this change, many of the current fields in the e107_user table will be moved into the e107_user_extended table. This will help keep that table smaller for those sites that do not want or need many of the fields. Yes, there will be an update script to move all current data.
Since you will be able to create and edit your own field names, I wanted to avoid any conflicts with field names. So anyone that wants to have an extended field to hold the Yahoo id, the field name would be the same in all installs of e107. Keeping a known field name will allow for plugins to be written. The plugin will know what the field name will be called. To accomplish this, I have come up with a list of predefined extended user fields. These can be activated/deactivated by the site admin as they see fit. The list of fields I currently have are: aim, birthday, homepage, icq, location, msn, and yahoo.
I am looking for suggestions for other popular field names that I can add to this predefined list. Please add your suggestions to the comments. I will add the most popular ones.