Minor Forum Updates: Profile Fields

Guerrilla

TLDR: Added new profile fields for Battle.net, Discord, GitHub, LinkedIn and Patreon and minor usability improvements in Edit Profile

So, not much of an update, but I guess I get to make a thread anyway.

Quite a line up

This weekend I messed around with profiles a little (a lot actually, but the other thing I was working on isn't quite ready yet). Since we closed down Self Promotion last week, I figured I'd add a bunch of new useful (I hope) profile fields for you promote your things elsewhere online. People can now look you up on Battle.net, visit your Discord server, check out your stuff on GitHub or your profile on LinkedIn and even support you on Patreon, if you got one of those going. All of this is, as always, entirely optional, so if you'd rather just post on the forums and not get involved with the other stuff, that's cool too.

I also tweaked edit profile a little to make the whole profile fields a little user friendlier. Basically, most of the fields just need your username, but most people copy the entire URL, so I just fix them manually, whenever I'm doing database maintenance, which I suppose is convenient enough, but not really good for teaching users how the fields actually work. With that in mind, they will now tell you, if they just need your username on a given site, or if they require a whole URL or something else. IMDB and LinkedIn are a little weird, since they only take a part of the URL (the part after /name/ and /in/ respectively), but I hope this will clarify things a little. If not, it's not like I'll run out of database maintenance, so I guess I can keep switching them around in the back end.

You might be curious (probably not) about why bother with usernames instead of just using the full URLs. There are two main reasons. The first one was that I'm just trying to be user friendly. I figured a simple username is the easiest thing to look up instead of having to mess around with URLs. The other, arguably bigger reason is security. All text fields on websites get targeted by all kinds spammers and bots, so I wanted to make sure there's no way for them to try to hide any kind of payload in the profile fields. All of the profile fields, apart from homepage, will always end up on the site they're supposed to be pointing at no matter what you put in the field. If it's a username, it'll find a profile. If it's something else, you'll get a 404, but at there's no way you'll end up on some dodgy spammer site, when you click on someone's ArtStation on their profile.

Anyway, here's a quick refresher of all the things you can put in your profile:

Homepage - your homepage on the Internet. Include the http:// or https:// bit to ensure the link works.

Copy the whole URL

ArtStation - a link to your ArtStation profile. Only needs your Username

https://www.artstation.com/[THIS BIT]

Battle.Net - Your Battle.net name (doesn't link anywhere)

Behance - a link to your Behance profile. Only needs your Username

https://www.behance.net/[THIS BIT]

DeviantArt - a link to your DeviantArt profile. Only needs your Username

https://www.deviantart.com/[THIS BIT]

Discord - You can link to your Discord server (or one you like to hang out at). Just put in the Invite code

Facebook - a link to your Facebook profile or page. Only needs the end of the URL

https://www.facebook.com/[THIS BIT]

GitHub - a link to your GitHub page. Only needs your Username. If you're hosting something on GitHub.io use Homepage field instead

https://github.com/[THIS BIT]

IMDB - a link to your IMDB profile. Needs the last bit of the URL after /name/

https://www.imdb.com/name/[THIS BIT]

Instagram - a link to your Instagram profile. Only needs your Username

https://www.instagram.com/[THIS BIT]

LinkedIn - a link to your LinkedIn profile. Needs the last bit of the URL after /in/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/[THIS BIT]

Patreon - a link to your Patreon page. Only needs your Username

https://www.patreon.com/[THIS BIT]

PlayStation - Your PSN name (doesn't link anywhere)

Sketchfab - Your Sketchfab profile. Only needs your Username

https://sketchfab.com/[THIS BIT]

Steam - Your Steam ID (doesn't link anywhere)

Twitch - a link to your Twitch channel. Only needs your Username

https://www.twitch.tv/[THIS BIT]

Twitter - a link to your Twitter profile. Only needs your Username

https://twitter.com/[THIS BIT]

Vimeo - a link to your Vimeo channel. Only needs your Username

https://vimeo.com/[THIS BIT]

Xbox - Your Xbox Gamertag (doesn't link anywhere)

YouTube - a link to your Youtube channel. Needs the whole URL, because Youtube URLs are an unstandardized nightmare

Copy the whole URL