Profile questions

Profile questions

This page allows you to view and manage profile questions for selected user type.

Edit profile question

To edit profile question, click on "edit" link on the "profile questions" page.

Profile questions can be of different types depending on the question you'd like to create. For example it can be a text box for user to fill in manually, it can be a drop down box with various items for user to select, check boxes, etc.

Name

You may type in your profile question here. For example "Gender". This will show up across the site.

Name (view)

Some profile questions may require different wording depending on where they are displayed. For example you may have a profile question to store user's birthday which you named "Birthday". This is what will be displayed during registration. However when you view someone's profile you obviously don't want to see "Birthday" but rather "Age". This is the place to enter it. System will use this name when you view someone's profile.

Name (search)

If your question is searchable, you may optionally specify a different value which will be displayed on the search form, for example "Seeking". If you do not fill it in, system will use the original profile question name.

Keyword

This text box must contain a unique keyword for your profile question. It's used by the system and will not be displayed anywhere. You may use only alpha-numeric English characters, underscores and dashes here.

Type

Profile questions can be of different types, such as "text box", "check box", "drop down list" and others. This is where you may select preferred type. Depending on the selected type you may see additional input fields displayed related to that specific type, for example "maximum width" for "text" type. Note that if you change the type of existing profile questions, you may lose their values. For example if you change "check box" (which can store multiple values) to "text" (which can store only one value) system obviously won't be able to save those multiple values in a single value text box. However if you change "drop down box" to "radio buttons" system will be able to save the values.

HTML code

This setting is displayed if your "type" is set to "textarea".

  • All tags option allows user to enter unrestricted HTML code into the text box. Use this ONLY for the control panel as otherwise your users can easily abuse it.
  • Safe tags option can be used by users as only certain HTML code is allowed.
  • Only links does not allow any HTML code other than links.

WYSIWYG editor

This setting is displayed if your "HTML code" is set to "all tags" or "safe tags" and allows users to edit text in a text-friendly editor similar to Microsoft Word.

Disable image insert

If enabled users will not be able to insert images from third party websites.

Nofollow links

If enabled all links will be set as "nofollow" which would usually deter spammers as they gain no SEO value by posting links on your site.

Required

If enabled profile question will be required for users to fill in.

Help text

If entered system will display small hints below profile questions to help users fill them in correctly.

Regular expression

If you're familiar with regular expressions, you may type in regular extension rules here to validate user's input. This option is applicable only to profile questions that require manual user's input such as text boxes. If your regular expression is not valid it may create errors when filling in profile information so make sure you test it by updating your own profile after.

Custom error

If you filled in regular expression text box and user's input doesn't validate, this optional custom error message will be displayed.

Items

This option is displayed if you select profile type that is either a check box, radio box or drop down list. You may create a list of items user will be able to select from. If profile question is available for search, you will see a second text box that allows you to specify a value system will use when this profile question is displayed on the search form. For example if you're asking for user's gender during registration, you will have "Man" and "Woman" in the first text box. On the search form however it will make sense to show "Men" and "Women" (plural) when asking user who they'd like to search for. If you do not fill in the second text box, system will use original item's name from the first text box.

Show on registration page

If enabled profile question will be displayed on the registration form.

Show on public page

If enabled profile question will be displayed in user's public profile page.

Show on browse page

If enabled profile question will be displayed in search results, or any other place where several users are displayed at once, for example "Friends" page.

Show on search form

If enabled profile question will be displayed in the search form and will be searchable.

On advanced search form

Same as above but for advanced search.

Search options

Options in this field might change depending on the profile question type you select. For drop down and radio types you'll see "search range" item which means user will be able to specify the "from" and "to" values on the search form. This is useful for numeric values such as user's age, height or weight. If you select "multi search" item, user will be able to select multiple options to search for. This is useful if you have selected a drop down list question type. For location question type you may enable "search by distance".

Number of columns

If you selected "multi search" item in "search option" input field, you may specify how many columns system should split the items into. This is useful if you have many items to select from, such as with the "interests" profile question.

Detect coordinates

For location question type you may enable coordinates detection. This is necessary if you would like to allow users to search by distance. You must enable at least one geocoding service in the control panel for this to work.

Class

You may type in CSS class system will include when this profile question is being edited. This would normally be used for text boxes and text areas to specify their width and height.